Settling In
by NebulousMistress
Summary: A VERY alternate character interpretation. Can be read as an AU. Third in the Gillian House series. Follows the events of mid-season canon.
1. Second Thoughts

First, a caveat. This is still a **very** alternate character interpretation. This is third in a series. This chapter follows the events in episode 7x9 "Larger than Life." It is a personal challenge to follow canon as closely as possible, adding to it without attempting to remove from it in any way. This is especially difficult considering the more, ah, abusive turns in canon Huddy. As always, this can be read as an AU.

Gender is a complex thing. While current research is pointing to physical structures in the brain that dictate gender identity, gender as we know it is also more of a social construct than anyone would ever want to admit. Thus Dr. House has not been assigned a set gender pronoun throughout. Rather the pronoun and name used in any particular scene is a reflection of the individuals in that scene in addition to the gendered trappings (going 'stealth', for example), and the feel of the scene itself. Thus can the viewpoints of different characters towards Gillian House be inferred. And thus the reason why names and pronouns jump from one extreme to another. In some scenes House isn't assigned a gender pronoun at all. It leaves the interpretation of these scenes up to the reader and enables all parties involved to take from this what they will.

Dialogue and stage directions pulled out of the episode are compliments of the House Transcripts community on livejournal.

This is a work of fanfiction. No money is being made from these pieces. Besides, it is highly unlikely that the owners of House MD would entertain an idea like this one. Though it would be awesome, it remains too controversial.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, drugs, etc. You've been officially warned.

-00000-

The office was boring, impersonal, and yet full of nervous tension. Dr. House sat across from Dr. Nolan, neither speaking a word. House's good leg bounced restlessly with unspent energy, Nolan appeared the perfect model of calm and waiting. He wouldn't speak until House said something, even if that meant the whole hour wasted in silence.

House caved. "I didn't dump Cuddy." There. It was said.

Nolan nodded and sat back in his chair. "I thought you'd decided to," he said, carefully neutral.

"Yeah well…" House trailed off. "I don't want to be alone anymore."

"Not being alone is more important to you than transitioning?"

"No."

"Than what happened?" Nolan asked.

House took a deep breath before launching into a rant. "You remember I told her I'm trans. Wilson dumped Sam that same day and I couldn't be there for him. He hasn't been the same since. It's the other part of his dating cycle, the months after she dumps him that he's still in love with her and can't stand to be without her. It's a nightmare. Essentially he's not there as a support structure because during all the time we're together I'm the one supporting him. And the last support group you recommended insulted me to my face for not being 'trans enough' because I didn't transition when I was in my 20s. Societal changes and medical advances be damned; if I wanted to be a 'true transwoman' then I should have transitioned before I was 30 because it doesn't _mean_ anything after that." The rant ended with House giving a look of utter vitriol, daring Nolan to suggest another so-called 'support group'.

"And you think staying with Cuddy is going to give you the support you need?" Nolan asked carefully.

House seemed to shrink a little bit, appearing more vulnerable. "She says she's willing to try starting over with us. She says she's coming into this knowing full well that I'm not the man she envisioned and that I never will be. That she won't try to change me into that man. That we'll be taking it one day at a time. And that if she gets weirded out she'll tell me and we'll admit isn't working and part ways, no hard feelings."

"That's… very mature of her," Nolan allowed.

"Yeah, well, she dumped Lucas for me, she said she should at least try to make this work."

"And what do you feel about this arrangement?"

House shrugged. "Between Wilson needing me every moment of his free time and Cuddy trying to bone me every chance she gets I'm really missing out on my 'me' time. And I already have plans to test just how far I can push Cuddy before it gets weird. So I feel it's about the same as everything was before I came out. I still don't have my Wilson back, Cuddy's monopolizing my time, and I have to deal with a two-year-old."

"And if you get 'weirded out', do you have the same right to walk away?" Nolan asked.

House gave him a look.

"Have you laid that out to Cuddy?"

House's look changed to thoughtfulness before admitting 'no'.

"If you don't assert your rights, whether they be legal, personal, or just who gets what side of the bed, no one is going to do it for you. Remember that, Gillian."

-00000-

"You're coming over for dinner next Thursday, aren't you?"

House picked at his lunch, the hospital cafeteria bustling around them. He and Cuddy were hiding out in a corner booth, the snow keeping them from sitting outside. "Your birthday?" he asked.

"My mother's going to be there," Cuddy said. "I haven't told her about, well…" She trailed off, uncomfortable.

"About?"

She forced the words out. "About you."

"I see," House said quietly. "Are you going to?" He picked at his salad, suddenly not just disinterested.

"Not now," Cuddy admitted. "That's why, well…"

_Please tell me I'm free, please tell me I don't have to go_… House thought.

"I need you to act the part of the proper **boy**friend," she said, quietly emphasizing the gender. "Just be nice, normal, civil to my mother for two hours."

_I should have known_. "You know I don't do 'civil'," House said, trying to focus on the horror of not being able to snark, to poke, to prod, to communicate effectively for two whole hours, probably much longer.

"You haven't even met my mother yet," Cuddy coaxed. "All I need is one good first impression and that's it."

House gave a skeptical look.

"I'll make it worth your while," Cuddy bribed. She leaned over just a bit, tucking one arm under her breasts to fluff them up so they threatened to spill out of her top.

House swallowed, two wants warring for acknowledgement. One want pointed out it was much easier to satisfy and House found himself nodding. He idly wondered if this willingness to do anything for the privilege to grope boobs would ever lessen.

Cuddy got up, declaring her lunch finished. She took his chin in one hand. "The best comes after you meet my mother," she promised. She kissed him and left him alone in the cafeteria.

House licked his lips as the spell of breasts left his mind, leaving her wanting that power for her own. House wondered what exactly had just happened. She flicked the half-touched lettuce leaves off her plate for the pork chop underneath.

-00000-

The loft had seen better days. Recently, the loft had seen worse days. Boxes of Chinese food were scattered around the main room, beers full and empty on the coffee table, and the TV played a movie that would have been vastly improved by the addition of robots to the front row. House sat with her legs propped up on the coffee table, Wilson hunched over and nursing a beer.

"She hasn't told her mother," House lamented randomly.

Wilson took a pull of his beer. "Wazzat?"

"Cuddy doesn't even call me by my name."

"What's she call you then?"

"She calls me 'House'."

Wilson snorted before taking a drink. "That's your name, House," he pointed out.

"She doesn't call me 'Greg', not after I told her, but she won't call me 'Gillian'."

"She needs time," Wilson said, gazing into his nearly empty beer bottle. "Just a little more time and it wouldn't have failed."

House threw a fortune cookie at Wilson. "We're not talking about Sam," she snapped.

Wilson finished his beer and pulled a fresh one off the coffee table.

"If you're gonna turn into a girl on me again then I'm off," House warned. She got up.

Wilson's arm shot out to snatch her wrist. "Don't go," he pleaded, looking up into her eyes. "Don't leave like she did."

House sat back down, taking the opportunity to grab the garlic chicken.

"Thank you," Wilson whispered before curling back up with his beer.

"I don't even think she's told her mother about me," House said, trying to act as though nothing had happened. "And I'm supposed to be meeting said mother at some point, which means she doesn't expect me to go through with the transition. So when I disappoint her again by growing tits she's going to leave me. And I'll be alone again."

"You're not alone, Gillian," Wilson said.

"Well, not right now," House conceded.

"You haven't been alone for a long time," Wilson said cryptically. "Longer than you think."

House looked at him, confused.

"You're still coming to the film festival with me, aren't you?" Wilson asked.

"Of course I am."

"Good. I wouldn't go if you weren't there." Wilson seemed to uncurl just a little bit as they sat back to watch the movie.

"I've seen puppets on strings that look better than that," House commented on the poorly animated CGI piranha chasing a girl in a tiny bikini.

"Yeah, that's it, wave your butt, you might distract it," Wilson coaxed, egging the girl on as the monster fish caught her foot and she tried to escape by wiggling her hips.

Things were getting somewhat better. Still, 'better' was far from normal.

-00000-

'Better' was debatable. The constant push and pull of therapy and expectations, relationship and friendship, work and cases…

House couldn't stand it. One day off, just one. One day to curl up on the couch with a bottle of scotch and a TiVo of soap operas. One day. Surely that wasn't too much to ask.

Apparently it was. Choosing Wilson over Cuddy didn't even help, not this time.

House found himself acting the dutiful boyfriend, biting his tongue, complimenting the food, and trying desperately to say nothing. Nothing at all.

He said nothing when Arlene polished off her fourth glass of wine midway through the main course.

He said nothing when Arlene insulted Wilson's intelligence, however veiled it may have been. He did, however, offer to pour them both more wine. A couple of tablets into the open wine bottle, empty the contents into both their glasses, make sure to tip most of into her glass, no one would have to know.

He said nothing when Arlene insulted Cuddy's skills as a parent.

He even said nothing when Arlene insinuated Cuddy was less of a success because she chose to devote more of herself to her career instead of to her daughter.

But the moment Arlene started into Cuddy about not calling House 'Greg,' implying Cuddy was a slut, calling for his conversion to a religion just because the family matriarch wanted it…

"Okay, I got this," House said, voice dropping dangerously near a growl. "First of all, 'mom'..."

…_just because you decided to devote your life to raising children like a good little housewife doesn't mean your successful career-minded daughter is any less of a woman than you._

…_how dare you call your daughter a slut in front of a two year old? Your own granddaughter, even!_

…_you have no right to disrespect my friend like that. You have no concept of what he's gone through the past few months. I've done my best with him but it's never been good enough._

…_don't you __**ever**__ call me by that name!_

House never got to start any of the rants that crossed his mind. Instead Arlene slumped back, the sedatives finally kicking in. A moment of disorientation as all of those rants fell flat, unused. He had to admit he was impressed that she had such a high tolerance to have lasted so long. He sipped his coffee, self-satisfied.

"Oh my God," Cuddy breathed. She and Wilson checked Arlene to find her merely passed out. She looked back at House, realizing. "Did you **sedate** my mother?" she demanded.

Wilson smiled and gave a sigh of relief.

"Kicked in just in time," House admitted. "She'll wake up in a couple of hours, be good as new. Think of it as my birthday gift to you. You told me to keep my mouth shut. It's the only way I had a chance."

"Leaving aside the fact that House is a sociopath," Wilson said, trying not to laugh. "I have to admit that I'm-I'm honestly relieved. Your mother is quite a h- quite a handful." His face fell, confused. "What? I feel f-" Wilson's eyes went wide as he figured it out. "Oh you've got to be kidding me. You drugg'd me 'gin?"

"Sorry," House said. "I honestly thought you'd be worse."

Wilson glared. The glare stayed the whole time his head slumped forward, ending on the table in unconsciousness.

"That was my gift to myself," House said to Cuddy. He found Cuddy's look of 'how could you?' hilarious.

-00000-

The case was solved, the mother dealt with, and House was in Cuddy's office sprawled on the couch with Cuddy. "You know, you turned out remarkably close to normal, considering the genes in play," House said, close to a compliment.

"Thanks," Cuddy said.

"Here, in case your mom comes back." House held out a bottle of valium tied with a red bow. "Happy birthday."

Cuddy laughed before kissing him. "You are a sweet, sweet man," she said.

Something in House's eyes closed off. Almost as though he was expecting this.

"You coming over?" she asked.

"Yes. Oh, no, I can't."

"Wilson," Cuddy guessed.

House let her think that. "It's, uh, bowling night. He'll never forgive me if I don't."

Cuddy gave him a skeptical look.

"Oh screw it, I'm coming," House offered, not really meaning it.

Cuddy fidgeted with the bottle. "No, no, no, I'm not going to be responsible for that," she said. "You drugged the man, you go bowling with him."

"Well, my chances of sex are considerably lower with Wilson," House offered. Cuddy didn't flinch. "Fine." He got up.

"See you tomorrow?" Cuddy offered, fishing for a goodnight kiss. She frowned when she didn't get one.

House fumed on the way up to Wilson's office. Being called a man by Cuddy, who House had agreed to get back into this relationship with on the single condition that Cuddy respect her identity, was a punch to the gut to put an end to a perfectly mediocre day. A day of being avoided by Wilson, of idiots in the clinic, of a socially inept child who couldn't even gloat right...

House barged into Wilson's office without knocking.

"Hey, you ready?" Wilson asked. He was just about finished for the day.

House grinned, suddenly happy that Wilson had forgiven so quickly. But bowling was no end for a day this bad. "Here's the thing…"

"Cuddy?" Wilson asked, hiding disappointment.

House recognized the out. It was an easy out to take, play friend and lover off of each other again and leave none the wiser. But Nolan was right. House needed support. Even if that support wasn't strong enough to offer it yet.

"I can't," she said, not taking the out. She slumped onto Wilson's couch. "Am I really doing the right thing here? The right thing for me, I mean? If I can't even get the woman who claims to love me to stop calling me a man to my face then what will transitioning accomplish? Should I even try?"

"What happened?" Wilson asked, disappointment evaporating in an instant.

"Cuddy thinks I am a 'sweet, sweet **man**'," House snapped.

Wilson nodded. "Not what she usually calls you," he admitted. "When was the last time anyone called you 'sweet'?"

House glared.

Wilson sat next to House, looked her eye-to-eye. "Have you told her it hurts you?"

House shrugged.

Wilson nodded. "If she doesn't know it hurts you she'll keep doing it without realizing. And she won't know unless you tell her."

"You two talk," House pointed out, trying to avoid the issue.

"Not saying it for you."

House stared at her cane, thumped it on the floor.

"I think you should transition," Wilson said. "Think of it as an experiment. Most people wonder how the other half lives, you'll get to know."

Staring blue eyes turned from cane to Wilson.

"I've only ever seen you happy in a dress or when you're having your individuality stamped out by some girlfriend. At least when you're in a dress you're you."

"I was happy with Stacy," House pointed out.

Wilson gave House a look. House nodded before going back to staring at her cane.

"What're you doing tonight?" Wilson asked.

"Tonight I need scotch, my couch, and my _Desperate Housewives_," House said.

"At least it's not ice cream," Wilson said sagely. And then laughed as he was promptly hit upside the head.

-00000-

"Your friend's right," Nolan said. "If you don't tell Lisa her actions hurt you then she won't know."

Therapy was halfway over and House had splurged for today. She wore a light blue blouse, long dark blue skirt, stockings, corset, and wig. The wig itched from all the hair underneath, a feeling House both hated and loved, hated because the wig felt even more like a costume, loved because it meant her hair was growing back. She paced, letting the pain keep her focused.

"Please sit down," Nolan pleaded. "I know that hurts you. I don't want to see you hurting yourself, Gillian."

House glared at the blatant manipulation. "I get coerced into enough things by Cuddy," she snapped.

"Let's talk about that. Please, House, sit down."

House stopped, pivoted on one foot. "If you _dare_ call me 'Greg' like she did I will hurt you," she warned.

"Who? Gillian, did Cuddy call you that?"

"No, her mother," House admitted, falling into the comfy chair.

Nolan breathed a sigh of relief. Incredible that today getting House to sit down felt like progress. "Lisa had you meet her mother?"

"Lisa was properly ambiguous in front of her mother," House allowed. "Kept calling me 'House', which I was fine with. And of course her mother took to mean we're not 'serious'. Which I was also fine with. I was lucky she passed out before I could tell her off."

"Lisa's mother… passed out?" Nolan asked carefully.

House shrugged. "She polished off two bottles of wine on her own," House deflected. "I didn't slip her a valium until after she'd insulted me, Cuddy, and Wilson, all to our faces, all in front of Cuddy's two year old. The woman apologized to me the day after for drinking so much, but not for what she said. What I did was the lesser evil."

Nolan dropped his head in his hands. "Where does young Rachel spend her time?" he asked.

"Cuddy hired a nanny for most of it. Sometimes her mom or sister fills in."

"I see," Nolan said thoughtfully.

House drew a conclusion. "Rachel came from social services, you want to send her back?" she asked.

"If the elder Cuddy is verbally abusive toward Lisa then you have every reason to worry about Rachel but there's no reason for social services to get involved. I'm certainly not telling you to seek out evidence, but I don't like the idea of Rachel having to spend time alone with her grandmother if she's going to be verbally insulting Lisa. Speaking of Cuddy's mother, how did Lisa take all of this?"

"Furious but impotent?" House offered. "She insulted me afterwards."

"We talked about this, if you don't tell her you're insulted by her referring to you as a man then she won't change her ways."

"I wonder if Ma Cuddy's right, if Lisa really doesn't think this is going to last. I don't know if I trust her to recognize she's hurting me without some sort of consequences. It's how I've always worked. If I suddenly change she won't think I have any opinion anymore. Not a prank war, no. But she'll have to do something for me. And I know just the thing."

"I'm glad you're starting to stand up for yourself, Gillian. But being juvenile isn't going to solve anything."

"Who said anything about juvenile?"

-00000-

House cooked, going all-out to prepare a romantic dinner for them. The apartment was clean, somewhat, the piano dusted, journal articles confined to only a few piles, the bed made and sheets fresh.

Cuddy was impressed, even floored at what House had done with the place. He hadn't said why, only to send Rachel to her aunt and come over for dinner.

The smells were amazing. She could hear House in the kitchen futzing with some presentation or something.

"In a minute," House called before stepping out of the kitchen with two glasses of chilled chardonnay.

Cuddy was speechless and not in a good way. House was wearing a dress, blue and knee-length with short sleeves. The corset's marks were obvious, the tits fake. At least he wasn't wearing the wig but he'd done something with his hair, it almost looked… girly.

"We need to talk," House said.


	2. The Talk

This chapter is **optional**. It picks up the moment the first chapter leaves off.

This chapter is that "talk" and the subsequent activities between House and Cuddy. "Subsequent activities" is a code word for humping. Porn. Sex. Huddy sex, even!

This chapter is written Third Person Central (Cuddy). I figured this chapter would be most useful from her POV. It allows me to cheat in the gender pronoun department since she still considers House a guy. It makes for easier-reading porn and highlights the sometimes painful difference between what two partners think is best or valid.

This chapter is rated M for themes on gender, porn, etc. (Noooo, really?)

-00000-

"We need to talk," House said.

Cuddy looked House up and down. She thought he looked vaguely comical, like a lady-boy from the old movies from the '40s, played for laughs and maybe pity.

"Please, Lisa," House said. "We really need to talk."

Cuddy accepted the offered wine and sat down at the table. "What do we need to talk about?" she asked.

House took a sip of wine. "When we agreed to continue this relationship, we laid down a few ground rules," he said. "I don't think those rules really cover everything that needs it."

"Such as?" Cuddy asked.

"I don't like being insulted, for one," House said.

Cuddy paused in mid-sip, before she could taste. She set down her wine glass, not sure what he meant. "When have I insulted you?" she asked.

"A 'sweet, sweet **man**'?" House asked wryly.

"You are," Cuddy pointed out. "You're very sweet in your own way and you never show it to anyone. I mean, consider all of this. Are those scallops I smell?"

House sighed, seemed to deflate. "I see," he said quietly. He slunk back to the kitchen.

Cuddy finally got a sip of wine, enjoying the taste. This was a really good chardonnay. She wondered what the occasion was.

House brought out two salads. "Lemon vinaigrette, just as you like it," he said. Cuddy puckered her lips for a kiss, was disappointed when he didn't oblige. Instead he looked very closed-off.

"This is wonderful," Cuddy complimented after taking a bite, trying to get some interaction out of him.

"Hmm." House picked at his leaves. He speared an olive, then a small tomato, just stacking them on the tines of his fork.

"What is it?" Cuddy asked, trying to draw him into conversation with compliments. "I'm very flattered you decided to cook, it all smells delicious. Please say something, Greg."

House slammed his fork on the table, olive popping off to bounce somewhere out of sight. "_Don't __**ever**__ call me by that name!_" he shouted.

Cuddy was rendered speechless. The wild look in his eyes, the fury etched on every line of his face, the panting for breath. He scared her. And then as suddenly as it started the fury seemed to melt. House deflated, looking resigned to something.

"This isn't going to work," House said quietly. "After I told you, you wanted to continue our relationship regardless. You said you'd respect who I was. You said wouldn't belittle me or insult me or mock me for who I 'chose' to be, as if I even have a choice. And yet you haven't stopped. Not even when there's no one around to overhear."

"I'm sorry," Cuddy whispered. "I didn't know." She hadn't known she was doing it. It was just automatic. House had always been, well, House. He'd always been the man she met in med school, the man she hired, the man who convinced her to hire Wilson, the man who asked her to fix him.

"How couldn't you know?" House asked. "How couldn't you know it would hurt me to hear you calling me a man, especially in private? How couldn't you know that by calling me by that name you're telling me you don't think I'm really serious about this? How couldn't you know that calling me a man would dehumanize me by telling me that you think your assessment of who and what I am is more important than my own identity?"

"I didn't know I was doing it," Cuddy clarified. "This is a lot for me to get used to, House. You can't expect me to change all my habits in a few weeks."

"You have before," House countered.

"This is different," Cuddy defended.

"I bet it is," House challenged. "That's why you've never called me 'Gillian', not once. That's why you still cringe every time you see me in a dress. That's why you still think of me as a **man**. It hurts me, Lisa. It hurts me more than you could ever understand. And I can't even tell if you're trying to hurt me or if you're trying to change at all."

"I'm so sorry," Cuddy whispered. She was sorry. Sorry that he hurt, sorry that he felt he didn't have a choice, sorry he was putting himself through this. And she knew she couldn't voice any of it because then he'd accuse her of belittling him again, of insulting him by not taking him seriously. She was trying. She was trying to take him seriously but it was just so hard…

"I know you're sorry," House said. He looked calculating. She didn't like that look. "But I think this requires more than just 'being sorry'."

"What do you mean?" Cuddy asked. She had little experience with this side of House, the vengefully playful side. Wilson usually took the brunt of it. What was he going to do to her?

"I think we'll wait for that," House said, his calculating look turning anticipatory. "First, didn't you mention dinner smells delicious?"

Cuddy didn't know if she should be afraid or thrilled.

-00000-

Thrilled was more like it.

Dinner was finished quickly and then House announced dessert. Which was how Cuddy found herself naked on her boyfriend's bed, warm chocolate sauce being spooned in intricate patterns on her skin.

House knelt on the bed, straddling one of her thighs. He still wore that damned dress and one of the most intense looks of concentration she'd ever seen on him. He dipped the spoon in the jar of sauce and let melted chocolate ribbon down in what felt like semi-random spirals across her breasts, her belly, up her neck.

"Can I look?" Cuddy asked.

"Not done yet," House said, his look of concentration turning predatory. He spooned more sauce but it blobbed, not warm enough to fall in soft ribbons anymore. "Finished."

Cuddy looked down, not quite able to make out any pattern. Her body heat had caused some of it to melt and start sliding out of whatever pattern House had drawn. All it looked like was a bunch of spirals from a few central points. It was pretty and all but if there was some meaning or something she didn't get it.

House moved down the bed so Cuddy could move. He looked expectant, there must be some sort of meaning she wasn't getting. She put on the most seductive smirk she could find. "Weren't we going to have dessert?" she asked.

House smiled, getting on his hands and knees between her legs. He slid his legs behind him on the bed, falling to his hips and knees. A playful tongue dipped down to her belly, tracing a chocolate spiral around her navel.

She dropped her head back and moaned. His tongue lapped at the lines of chocolate melting on her body, pausing only to suck and nibble at her sides, under her breasts. Soft fabric met her damp skin and hands crept up her sides to finger her nipples. She pulled herself out of a fog to look down at her lover. He was licking chocolate away from between her breasts, smearing it around her nipples. He still wore that damned dress, its silken touch ghosting across her legs and belly. He supported his weight on elbows and hips leaving his hands free to trace through the chocolate spiral still adorning one breast.

One hand pressed itself behind her back, holding her close. House brought the other up to her mouth for her to suck, lick away the chocolate there. She captured his fingers with her lips, swirling her tongue around them to foreshadow things to come.

Lustful blue eyes met hers and House held her stare while he lowered his head to her breast to suck on the skin there. He tightened his arm behind her, arching her up for a better angle.

Cuddy wrapped her arms around him, wrapped her fingers in his hair. She idly thought of how long it was getting before guiding his head to her other breast. She felt his smile against her skin before he bit down, wrenching a cry out of her. He sucked her skin, marking the skin of her breast, right where anyone would be able to see it if she wore any of her normal clothes.

"House," she warned.

He kissed the mark he'd made and continued his tongue's journey up her body, licking the chocolate away from her neck before crushing her body to his and burying his face in her neck.

She wanted him so much. Her hands went to the back of his dress and started groping for a zipper, buttons, whatever it was that was keeping him from her.

He pulled away from her and grasped her wrists, pulling them away from his back. He kissed the palm of one hand before slinking down the bed to settle between her legs. He kissed each thigh before leaning down to suck on her clit.

Cuddy moaned at the feel of his tongue at her core, reached down to entwine her fingers in his hair again. She spread her thighs wide and ground her hips up into his face. She gasped when he hummed against her flesh, keened when he squirmed his tongue into her in a toe-curling attempt at her g-spot. He pulled off for a moment and gasped before diving back in, pressing two fingers into her, adding that pleasant fullness she was craving. She felt a flurry of nipping teeth and swirling tongue driving her over the edge as she wrapped her legs around his shoulders and screamed.

An hour, a moment later Cuddy found the strength to look down at her lover. House was still licking her, ever so gently in time with the spasms of her fading orgasm. He gazed at her, eyes dark with lust, half his face glistening with her fluids.

"What about you?" Cuddy asked, still catching her breath.

"I have some ideas," House said, his voice deep and almost purring. He reached over the side of the bed. Cuddy heard some odd clinking sounds but was too sated to care much. "Lift your hips," he instructed. She did and felt something slip around her waist, between her thighs, buckle at the front. _What?_

She looked down. _Why?_ House fastened the last buckles of the strap-on harness. Attached to the harness was a bright purple dildo about the size and shape of an average erect cock.

"Why do I have a dick?" she asked.

House gave her a slightly bemused look. "Sometimes I ask myself the same thing," he said. "Then I remember it's fun."

Cuddy gave him an 'I am not amused' look.

"Relationships are about give and take," he said, running a finger up and down her thigh. "That's what you told me. But then I realized, as it stands 'give and take' usually means outside of work I give and you take. I concede to your demands, go along with your activities, babysit your kid, and perform sexually when you request it. On the other hand I can't get a day to myself without lying to you, after that disastrous date I planned we haven't done anything I would enjoy, and the sex we have is always exactly and only what you want. When you said 'give and take' I was imagining we'd both be giving and taking. Not this.

"So I'm asking you to give something for me," he continued. "Something I want. Something you never would have thought to give, the same as I never would have thought to end up babysitting. Please. Give this for me."

Cuddy didn't want to. There was plenty she gave for this relationship, putting up with the fact that he was **still** wearing that dress, for example. And how dare he leave out everything he put her through at work? Just because they'd signed contracts with HR saying they would keep their relationship and work separate...

She wanted to say no. She really did. She opened her mouth to say no.

He looked so hurt. So vulnerable. It floored her that House could be vulnerable, ever. Even during the infarction he hadn't been vulnerable, not really. She realized she could break him. Crush him right there. And if she said no, she just might.

"Okay," she said.

She watched his vulnerability turn to relief. He kissed her thighs again, still slick from her own juices, before licking up the shaft of the dildo. Cuddy held her breath, watching in weird fascination as he wrapped his lips around the head of the dildo and slowly took it in his mouth. His eyes closed and he sighed, taking it deeper. She could see his cheeks hollow as he sucked, feel hands sliding under her hips to pull her closer, to push the dildo deeper into his mouth. He started slowly bobbing his head.

He was giving her a blowjob. She had no idea what to do or how to react. She saw his eyes open, look up playfully, before he pulled off. He gasped, lust returning to his eyes before sucking the dildo back in and blowing her for all he was worth.

After some of the weirdness passed she figured it was kind of hot. She buried a hand in his hair and pulled him down. He made a surprised sound, looking up at her in delight and letting her guide his movements.

This was getting interesting. It was powerful, being able to control how he sucked, dictating the rhythm he used in sucking her… dildo.

The sudden disconnect threw her out of her enjoyment. He wasn't sucking her cock, it was just a rubber dildo attached to a harness. It didn't feel like hers. A farce. She pulled him off, was just a little floored by how good the slightly-used look was on him. He gave her a questioning look.

"It doesn't feel right," she admitted.

"Feels like you're just the mount for a dildo?" House asked.

"Exactly."

House nodded. "I've known that feeling," he said. "There's something else we can do with this. Something that might make you feel a little more involved."

It took a moment for Cuddy to realize what he was suggesting. "Are you sure?" she asked.

House leered.

"I've never done that before," she admitted. It wasn't something 'good girls' did. Especially not from this end.

"It's not difficult," House purred. "I'll be happy to do most of the prep work if you want to watch."

"This is weird," Cuddy warned.

"It's better than you're thinking," House said seductively. "To have someone bigger, stronger than you, writhing under your touch, reduced to moaning, panting at the feel of your cock sliding in and out, to know that you're giving all that and more, reducing someone to putty in your hands as they beg you for release…"

Cuddy knew what he was doing. He was trying to appeal to her ambition, to turn sex into a power game. It was kind of working. She really did want to know what it felt like to reduce House to a writhing mess. He was always so in-control through most of sex, only making the barest of sounds on those occasions when she'd suck him off. She wanted to hear him lose control.

"I'm not fucking you in that dress," she said.

House knelt on the bed and smoothed the fabric down his torso, hips. He tried to look seductive but couldn't pull it off. Cuddy didn't think he would ever be seductive in a dress.

"No?" House asked.

Cuddy shook her head.

House gave a long-suffering sigh, the kind that made Cuddy know he wasn't going to hold it against her. He stood up and reached behind himself. Cuddy heard the soft sound of a zipper and the dress was pooling at his feet. It didn't help much, now nothing covered that damned corset and a completely ineffectual pair of panties that couldn't hope to contain his erection. He pulled padded cookies out of his corset, tossed them aside. The corset came undone surprisingly fast, unhooked down the front in one smooth motion. Panties stripped and he stood naked before her, his anticipatory look something she hadn't seen on him since that first time in med school.

"So how do we do this?" she asked.

"Hands and knees might work if I had a whole leg and you were a foot taller," House admitted. "Instead…" He grabbed some pillows, stacked them, then laid himself down on them face-down. He shifted a little bit, arching his back to find the best position. He hummed in satisfaction, reached into the nightstand to pull a tube of lubricant.

Cuddy recognized the bottle from the OB-GYN supply. "You lifted that from the hospital," she accused.

"They have the best lubes," he said, squeezing some out on his fingers. "And by 'best' I mean 'free'."

Cuddy wanted to be annoyed but was very quickly distracted by the sound House made as he stroked his fingers over his anus. His eyes fluttered closed and he made the tiniest sound as he slipped a finger inside, slowly drew it in and out. She found herself gasping along with him as he added the second finger. He arched his back and hummed, something akin to bliss of his face. She'd never seen him like this…

She didn't realize he'd moved until he was pressed against her, stroking lube onto her strap-on, licking her lips for entrance. She grasped his head painfully and plundered him, pushing her tongue past his lips to taste every inch of him. He molded himself to her, letting her take full control. It was thrilling, to control him like that. She pulled off, both of them panting for air. She nodded and he settled back onto the bed, spreading his legs wide, propping himself on his elbows and canting his hips back to give her better access.

Her bravado left her pretty quickly, leaving behind mostly uncertainty. She was a doctor, she could figure out **where** things went but not **why**. The noises he'd made weren't lost on her but she couldn't help trying to overanalyze them.

He looked behind at her. "Please."

There he went looking vulnerable again. Cuddy settled herself between his spread legs and tried to press the strap-on into his hole. A few tries and she brought a hand into things, using it to find where things went and where they were going.

House gave the tiniest shriek when the head popped inside.

"Are you…" Cuddy started, about to pull out.

"More," he gasped. He arched his hips toward her, wiggled them enticingly. "Slowly."

She let gravity work, sliding her hips down until skin met skin. And marveled at the long, drawn-out moan wrenched out of House. Once the strap-on was inside she waited, watched in fascination as he gasped, had to make an effort to control himself. She'd never seen him like this.

"Move," he implored.

Move? Wait… Cuddy pulled out a little bit and thrust back in. "Like this?"

House moaned again, nodding. His eyes fluttered closed as she started moving in and out. The sounds he made were fascinating, every moan, every cry she'd never heard from him all wrung out at once. But it still felt detached, like it wasn't really her. Sure, she was providing the physical movement but it was the shaft of silicone rubber giving him all the pleasure. Hell, he'd made more noise fingering himself than she'd ever been able to get out of him before. It was… depressing.

It didn't even feel powerful, not with House arching back to meet every thrust or keening with every gasping exhale or even seeing every muscle in his shoulders straining with effort. His head dropped back, glazed blue eyes meeting hers.

Somehow knowing all that pleasure was genuine made it more depressing. She kissed his forehead then down his spine just for something to do other than the boring slam of her hips against the curve of his ass.

She could tell he was getting close. She kept thrusting, resigning herself to not enjoying this. He pressed his hips back with more force, seeming to thrust into the pillows. Cuddy followed suit, increasing the force of her thrusts until he tensed up and screamed.

She slowed her efforts as he trembled through his orgasm then dropped bonelessly onto the bed. She pulled out, hiding out on a corner of the bed. His breathing slowed from frantic pants to exhausted sighs.

"Have fun?" she asked.

He nodded, regaining enough breath to stretch out in one long, sated moan. "You?" he asked.

Cuddy shrugged.

House reached a hand towards her, flopping it uselessly on the bed when she wasn't within reach. She realized he wanted to hold her. She didn't want to be held, snuggling after sex required there to be sex. This, well, she just felt used. A dildo-mount. Still, she reached out a hand to clasp his.

He didn't pull her in to snuggle. And that made her feel worse.

"Depressing when it doesn't feel like yours, isn't it?" he asked.

She shrugged again.

House turned on his side and looked her in the eye. "A blowjob is different, at least you can appreciate it as something she's doing for you. But unless you can get off on your partner's pleasure, fucking just makes you feel like the cock-mount you are. A dildo stuck to the bathroom wall would feel better about itself. Especially when all she does is lie there or just hold onto you and make you do all the work. Your only choice is try to make it feel like yours, or..."

Cuddy felt terrible. She knew exactly what he was doing, trying to make her feel a little of what he was going through. She had to admit it was working. "Or do something about it," she said, finishing his sentence.

"Exactly," he said.

She nodded, getting up. A clink of buckles and the harness clunked to the floor. "I think I'm going to go," she said, subdued. He nodded, busy trying to wipe cum off of his belly with a cum-soaked pillowcase.

She couldn't bring herself to kiss him goodnight. She wasn't sure she deserved it.


	3. One Step Forward

Sometimes, fanfiction is a soapbox. It just is. People use fanfiction to stand on their soapboxes and argue in favor of OTPs, ideas, actions, character interpretations, etc. This time I stand on my soapbox to argue about double standards and credit law.

One of the secondary plots of 7x10 "Carrot or Stick" irked me. Severely annoyed me. Angered me, even. As well it should have anyone who's dealt with double standards and/or has any experience with credit laws. I have experience in both, some of it fairly recent. And, really, as House himself tends to show, if there aren't consequences associated with actions then there's no reason not to do it again.

And again.

Standard note about gender pronouns being partly a social construct and thus dictated by the people in the room at that moment.

Dialogue and stage directions pulled out of the episode are compliments of the House Transcripts community on livejournal.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, bribery, etc.

-00000-

Their new setup seemed to be working out great, at least House thought so. No longer did Cuddy use sex as her main method of manipulation, not now that House had changed those rules.

The evidence of that rule-change was visible in subtle changes to the apartment. The make-up in the bathroom wasn't Cuddy's and wasn't hidden under the sink anymore, even if it went largely unused. A collection of dresses and skirts, some dating back to drag shows, hung openly in the closet next to rumpled shirts, a winter overcoat, and a rabbit fur stole. A collection of toys hid out in the bedside table, most having seen recent use.

Cuddy was less than thrilled. It wasn't a difficult thing for House to deduce; Cuddy had stayed distant since their 'talk', inviting House over for dinner almost out of habit while sending her back to her own apartment and lonely bed afterward.

House didn't mind so much. If it meant being manipulated less then it was well worth it. But was this really a relationship? It felt like once Cuddy stopped using sex like a cockleash they just… stopped having sex.

It hadn't been very long, just a week or so. Just long enough for two boring cases, three emergencies in the clinic, one bout of whining from Taub, and Wilson vowing never to give advice again.

That last one may have had something to do with House being more than willing to share all sorts of details about her 'talk' with Cuddy.

At least today seemed to be shaping up to be interesting. Chase's Facebook had sent out an alert about a new profile picture. Someone got hacked.

-00000-

It was a productive morning of mocking Chase. The new case only made the mocking funnier. Celebratory good coffee was in order. Wilson wasn't in his office so House went to the cafeteria alone, saving that long-suffering sigh until Wilson stopped making himself scare.

Cup of coffee in hand, House decided to check the cafeteria for something to pick at. Something found.

"Good morning," House said, seeing Cuddy in a booth. And then Rachel popped her eager little head up. "And what brings the lesser Cuddy to these parts?" he asked. He sat down next to Cuddy, the better to watch Rachel and wonder why she was eating with the handle of her spoon.

"Pediatrician appointment for an s-h-o-t," Cuddy explained. "Waldenwood insists vaccination reports go in with the application. Honey, finish your oatmeal."

"Waldenwood," House mused. "Is that by any chance a boarding school? Or a work camp?"

"It's our first choice pre-school," Cuddy said.

"Blocks made of gold, kids don't have to pick their own noses," House offered, fishing for more information.

"Great facilities and teachers," Cuddy said. "And they're known for their gifted program."

House glanced back at Rachel and her spoon. The dime incident echoed in his mind. There had to be a nice way to put this… "You sure that's the right place for her?" he asked. "Sounds a little snobby."

"I've done my research, we visited, it's a perfect fit."

Rachel dug her spoon handle into her oatmeal and flipped the bowl. She grinned in accomplishment as Cuddy reached over and put the bowl upright as though nothing unusual was going on. House clamped down on that instinct to say something, instead getting an idea.

There had to be more to a relationship than sex. Otherwise he and Cuddy were just using each other. And while it certainly felt like that most of the time, sometimes it really did feel like things might work between them. Like this give-and-take might actually be enough. House had taken from Cuddy her ability to control him using sex. Maybe he could give her Waldenwood for Rachel.

-00000-

Getting into Waldenwood for a look at their toys was a piece of cake. Everybody trusts doctors. Getting duplicates of the toys for the entry exam/play date was ten minutes at a toy store. Sneaking them in past Cuddy was the easiest part.

Getting Rachel to play with them was harder.

"Rachel, Rachel, this is a new toy," House said, waving a new set of blocks at her. "What kid doesn't like new toys? A moron, that's who." She sat down with Rachel to better wave a yellow block at her. "Okay, look at the pretty colors. Now, what color is this?"

Rachel held up an orange block. "Orange!"

"Yes, that is orange," House said. "What color is this?"

Rachel set the orange block on top of a block tower, more interested in her own toys.

House didn't have the patience for this. "Okay, blocks going away," she said, knocking over the tower with one sweep of an arm. "Bye-bye, blocks."

Rachel gave House a look that clearly said _How could you?_

"Next time reinforce the levees," House said. "Bad Army Corps of Engineers, bad!" She shook her finger at the collapsed tower before bringing out another toy. "What's this?"

Rachel looked on with interest at the ring game being set up.

"Oh! Rings," House said, still trying to interest Rachel. "Look at the rings. Now the goal of this game is-"

Rachel picked up one of the rings and started chewing on it.

"-to not kill you," House allowed. Clearly this wasn't going to work. She had no experience with children, had no idea how to get them to do what she wanted. Maybe she was thinking about this the wrong way. This required more thought.

Later that night, alone in bed, it came to her. The average two-year old was as smart as a dog, right?

-00000-

Not everything House picked up at the toy store was for Rachel. She'd also found a collection of anatomically correct farm animals imported from Germany. One of the stallions was posed in a rearing position and fit curiously well against the hips of the patiently standing mare. Cows and pigs also stood on the desk, not quite able to hold dirty positions without falling over. They had to settle for suggestions.

"There's got to be a link," Foreman said, resolutely ignoring House's toys. "Diet, sexual history, drug abuse…"

"No, believe me I asked," Taub said. "Those were some fun conversations."

"Do you believe the answers?" House asked, succeeding at balancing the bull on top of the cow in a mating pose.

"I know the answer to that is supposed to be 'no,' but I did," Taub said. "Not like the kid has had much unsupervised time lately."

A flower delivery guy came into the office holding a bouquet. "Delivery for Dr. Robert Chase," he said.

"That's me," House called before a confused Chase could open his mouth. She signed for the flowers, admiring the bouquet. Small bouquet, kind of cheap. Even if they weren't for her it felt kind of good to get flowers. She smelled them.

"The camp is in the woods," Masters said. "There are tons of opportunities for infection that not every person will pick up: legionellosis from water, toxoplasmosis from dirt, brucellosis from animals."

"Too bad none of those explain his symptoms," House said, pulling the card from the bouquet and reading it aloud. "Casey and Sanford Wells thank me for my extraordinarily generous donation to their wedding charity."

"Aww," Masters cooed.

"Oh God," Chase moaned. "She must have gained access to my credit card." He went to the computer, snatching note and flowers from House along the way.

"Nocardia fits," Taub suggested. "Bacteria lives in the dirt. They both-"

"Nocardia starts in the lungs, not the bladder," House pointed out.

"How generous is 'extraordinarily generous'?" Chase asked, dismayed.

"Call the charity," Masters suggested. "Explain the donation's a fraud."

"And take back the Wells' wedding gift?" Foreman asked. "You are extraordinarily screwed. Bushes can make a happy hunting ground for ticks. Lyme disease?"

"Neither of our patients have a rash or a tick bite," Masters pointed out.

"Forty percent of Lyme patients don't develop a rash and a bite's easy to miss," Foreman said.

"Start him on doxycycline for Lyme," House ordered.

"Twenty-five hundred dollars?" Chase said, sounding slightly ill.

"Cancel your credit card, find that girl, and marry her," House said, sending them all out of her office. After they'd left she grabbed her car keys. She needed to pick someone up.

Which was why when Wilson finally made it back from rounds he found House and Rachel on the floor in his office. "Well, this isn't weird at all," he said.

House had set up a pile of toys and had Rachel attempting to pick up plastic bananas with a pair of big red tweezers. "She's got the fine motor skills of The Hulk in oven mitts," House said. She held up a bag of cheese balls. "Do you want a doodle? Do you? Feed the monkey! Cuddy puts her to bed at 7:30, which cuts way into our training time. Play date's on Friday."

Rachel managed to grasp a plastic banana and put it through the toy monkey's mouth. House pressed the training clicker in her hand and dropped a doodle in the bowl next to Rachel. Rachel picked up the doodle and ate it with a big, self-satisfied grin.

"What is that?" Wilson asked.

"Dog training clicker," House explained, holding up the device. "Gives immediate positive reinforcement, bridging the precious seconds between desired behavior and treat delivery."

"House, she's not a dog," Wilson said. As if to prove him wrong Rachel fed the monkey without prompting. House pressed the clicker and gave her a doodle. "It really seems to be working. Does Cuddy know that Rachel's here and that you're turning her into a schnauzer?"

"I told Marina that Rachel and I are working on a secret art project for Mommy," House said. "Which means that some Peds patient is about to be short one art project."

"The sacrifices we make for our children's education," Wilson mused.

House started petting Rachel's head like she were a floppy-eared dog. "Who's a good girl? Whoooo's a goooood girl?"

Rachel giggled, enjoying the attention.

"You like her," Wilson observed. "You like Rachel."

"I'm doing this for Cuddy," House said.

"No, that would be you doing something nice for your girlfriend," Wilson pointed out. "Without prompting and without reward. That's not you. You like the kid."

"You think I can't do something randomly nice for my girlfriend?" House asked. Rachel fed the monkey again, getting a click and a doodle. She giggled, enjoying this game.

"Unless you really are a sweet, sweet woman and you've just been hiding it along with everything else," Wilson teased.

"Say that in front of anyone and I will make you pay," House threatened. She pressed the clicker as Rachel fed the monkey, gave her another doodle. "Cuddy's been acting like I've done something wrong. If I can do this for her maybe she'll let me off the hook for whatever it was I did."

"But you haven't done anything wrong."

"I know."

"So apologize for whatever she thinks you did and you won't have to go through anything complex like this," Wilson suggested.

"Can't do that."

"I know apologizing isn't your strong suit-"

"All your advice involves a questionably straight guy groveling to keep his girlfriend from leaving or emasculating him," House said, cutting him off. "Can't take it face value; I'm not even questionably straight, I'm not a guy, and if she emasculates me it's a favor."

Wilson looked hurt. "Right," he said quietly. He got up and left, the sound of a click and happy munching behind him.

-00000-

Waldenwood was a bust. On the plus side House got the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing Rachel was a lying prodigy. She wasn't sure how to react to Rachel's new fondness of her. On the worrying side, she could read that look on Cuddy's face as though it were written on a wall in ten foot letters. That 'House makes a wonderful dad' look. She wasn't the 'dad' material, and not just because she was banking on a few good tits.

Wilson had gone scarce again. House knew she'd insulted him by rejecting his advice. She knew she had to get through to him, prove to him somehow that she didn't just keep him around for advice. And find a way to get him over Sam.

Chase had figured out who was hacking his things. So had House, she just had to follow the same footsteps Chase had. It was surprisingly easy once she knew one of Chase's conquests had a sister. She'd joked that Chase should marry the girl who defrauded him, partly out of habit of trying to act male, partly because if the girl hated Chase so much then marriage to him would be punishment enough.

Mocking Chase, insulting his manhood, posting indecent pictures, that was all well and good. Mockings were free as far as House was concerned. Breaking laws for the purpose of healing someone, that she could understand; she had Foreman do it all the time and in the end it usually saved people's lives. But this wasn't healing. This was vengeance. Vengeance was different.

Very different.

Different enough to warrant action.

-00000-

House knocked on the office door then barged in. House usually tried to stay away from the chairman of the hospital's board, never can know when a malpractice suit might come up, but this required action.

Sanford Wells, board chairman looked unimpressed yet carefully neutral.

"You're wondering why I'm here," House began.

"Sadly, I might have an idea," Wells said with a long-suffering sigh. He had House's HR file open in front of him, therapist's letter at the front.

House noticed. "This has nothing to do with that. Well, very little, at any rate."

Wells seemed relieved. He gestured to the chair in front of his desk. "Then to what do I owe this pleasure?" he asked.

_If this is a pleasure then I wonder how much he dreads that conversation_, House thought. "One of my fellows".

"HR problems?" Wells asked.

"No, this indirectly involves you. Robert Chase. His, shall we say, playing the field at your wedding is none of my concern. And the aftermath shouldn't have to be either of ours. But, tangentially it was made your concern."

Wells fell back to looking unimpressed and carefully neutral.

"Long story short, he angered the sister of one of his conquests because he hit on both of them but then didn't follow up on one of them because she wanted a relationship first or something. The details don't matter. What matters is that said angry sister then decided the logical course of action was identity theft and felony credit card fraud by, ah, 'donating' $2,500 to your wedding charity under Dr. Chase's name, using his credit card, without knowledge or permission. Now, this makes it tangentially your problem since the credit card company was notified and your charity is now out $2,500 because she wanted to 'teach him a lesson.' I guess the much funnier and less illegal punishment of debasing his manhood on Facebook just wasn't enough for her."

"I wondered what had happened," Wells admitted. "So how is this my problem?"

"He didn't report her for it," House said. "He's going to let her get away with it. But as one of the defrauded you can report it."

"Why should I?"

"Because I'm really coming to hate double standards," House admitted. "If Chase were a female employee and this was some big, bad man doing this everyone would be all over the guy. But Chase is the big, bad man and the woman is the one doing the felonies. Suddenly this makes it okay, because somehow he deserved it? That he was asking for it by being an utter whore? That's the same type of argument that blames the woman for being raped because she wore a miniskirt."

"So you're asking me to send a woman to jail because she humiliated your fellow for being an 'utter whore'?" Wells asked.

"No, I'm asking you to send a woman to jail for defrauding you and your charity out of $2,500. She can humiliate Chase for being an utter whore all she wants."

"But $2,500 isn't exactly hard to come by for me," Wells said. "There's little to no reason for me to care."

"That's true," House admitted. "But it's harder to come by for me." House pulled out a checkbook. "You know that despite everything I've done for this hospital as a department head, giving this hospital the best diagnostics department in the country, world renown, fighting to regain that distinction after a leave of absence, I've got the salary of a fellow. And all because Cuddy knows I'm unemployable anywhere else and she can set whatever terms she wants. I hide it pretty well, don't you agree?" A check was written for $2,500. "I'm willing to replace what was stolen. Out of my own pocket. No one has to know."

"Is this a bribe?" Wells asked, unamused.

House handed him the check. Wells reluctantly took it. The check was made out to _Wedding Charity_. "A donation. To cover was what stolen. I leave doing the right thing to you." House got up to leave.

"You're asking me to send a young woman to jail," Wells said.

"She'll get two years tops, six months for good behavior," House pointed out. "Unless she's not a first-time offender. That would mean she's done this before and is perfectly willing to do it again. And again. But you won't know unless she's reported. I hate double standards. Unless of course they benefit me." House left the man with a check and a decision to make.

-00000-

Chase stormed into the diagnostics office to find House in early, giant red tennis ball in hand. "She's been arrested!" he shouted, incredulous.

"Surprised?" House asked.

"Who's been arrested?" Taub asked.

"That woman! Hacked my Facebook, stole my credit card, doctored photos, her!"

"She stole your credit card, why wouldn't she be?" Masters asked.

"Because I didn't report her!" Chase exclaimed. "I wasn't going to because she was right, I did deserve it!"

"There's three victims to every credit card fraud," House said, focused on the tennis ball. "The payer, that would be you, the payee, and the credit card company. Someone obviously didn't want to lose $2,500 just to teach some random guy a lesson. That random guy would also be you."

"You must have done it," Chase accused, turning on House. "You find out everything, even the things we don't know about us. And you knew it would fuck with me, you must have!"

"Wasn't me. She didn't steal anything from me." House looked straight into Chase. "And what makes you think the cops couldn't have followed all the incredibly obvious steps you did to the same conclusion? You had to report your credit card as stolen in order to cancel it. Why wouldn't the credit company report a case of felony fraud? Actions have consequences. She must have forgotten that while trying to punish you for forgetting it. And now she's going to be up on felony charges. Somehow I think 'public humiliation' was a much more fitting punishment for being an utter whore than 'credit fraud'. At least you didn't break any federal laws." Focus returned to the ball. House tried to spin it on a fingertip. It careened off and hit the wall, far too fuzzy to spin properly.

Chase fell into a chair, defeated.

"You didn't make her humiliate you," Foreman offered, his only words of comfort.

"Man assaults you on the street," House posed. "He blames you for being so pretty. Do you feel guilty?"

"Of course not!" Chase exclaimed.

"Then why feel guilty for being a whore?" Masters asked. "I mean, aside from being a whore."

"Helpful," House mocked, deadpanned. "There's nothing wrong with being a whore. I know some wonderful whores."

"You also pay them," Taub pointed out. "Chase works for free."

"The world needs more like him," House said, nodding sagely.

Chase collapsed in his chair, head on the conference table, arms folded to hide his face.

-00000-

House sat on the exam table in an unfamiliar clinic. Pamphlets on birth control and STDs lay stacked on a table, a poster detailing the structure of the inner ear on the wall. For some reason there was a Monet print on the ceiling directly above the exam table. House craned her head, trying to figure out why…

She noticed the stirrups on the exam table. Oh. That's why.

The overworked, underpaid attending entered. "I'm Dr. Hastings, what can I do for you, Gillian?"

"You have my file," House began. "I've been on anti-androgens for a month. I spoke with the other attending about my history of blood clots and he should have noted the decision to treat anyway. I am on an anti-coagulation therapy, have been without incident for 12 years now. I also work at a hospital, therefore if I were to clot somewhere I'd be in the right place and happen to be very familiar with the symptoms, personally familiar. I'd like to start treatment."

Dr. Hastings pulled up a chair. "Your therapist contacted me, we discussed the possible risk-reduction in your case," she said. "Normally I'd be worried about starting hormone therapy on someone with your history. To be honest I'm still worried. But there's the cost-to-benefit issue here. From what he could tell me, you could benefit much more from treatment than from not treating. So the best we can do is to minimize the risks. You realize if we start this you'll never be able to stop anti-coagulation therapy, even if you choose to stop hormone therapy for whatever reason."

"I never would have been able to stop it anyway," House observed.

"And to minimize the risks you'll be treated through injection. One every two weeks. For the first year I'd like to administer them. If it's going to cause a clotting episode chances are it'll happen in the first year and as your endocrinologist I'd like to know so we can work around such a possibility. This will include quarterly blood tests for hormone levels and clotting factors."

"And after that first year?"

Dr. Hastings smiled wryly. "You know how to inject yourself in the butt, right?"

House leered. "Normally if someone's sticking something in my butt it's not my doing."

"Good to know." Dr. Hastings was trying very hard not to laugh. She got up. "I'll be back in a minute."

House watched her leave, grinning at her amusement. She might actually like this one.

Dr. Hastings came back with a sealed syringe, pre-filled. "I'm starting you on a half-dose for the first month, to see how you react," she said. "Now, it'll probably be three months or so before you start to see any physical changes. I expect you'll start feeling different within five days. Drop 'em and bend over the table."

House smiled, gave her a 'come hither' look before dropping trou and leaning over on the table. A cold swipe, a tiny stab, the burn of an intramuscular injection, and that was it.

"That's it," Dr. Hastings said. "Congratulations, Gillian. You've officially started estrogen therapy."

"Thank you," House said. It felt like a weight was being lifted, like something was finally happening.

For once things would be how they were supposed to be.

-00000-

Not getting any reviews is both a blessing and a curse, I suppose.

It's a blessing since I don't have to worry about angry readers calling me sick (again) and can just write what feels best, without having to censor myself. I can make things more real, less romanticized, less sugar-coated and not have to worry about reviewers abandoning me.

It's a curse since, well, I got no reviews.


	4. Two Steps Back

This chapter gets a little dark. (a little? heh) Downright angsty, really. But then the episode 7x11 "Family Practice" is one of the darker episodes I've seen in a long while. I… I'm like the sane(r) characters on that, I have no words for the utter depth of ethical depravity reached by this episode.

It is my personal opinion that canon Cuddy's treatment of canon House is emotionally and psychologically abusive. Morally, ethically, and as of this episode one could argue legally. Just because she hasn't hit him doesn't mean it's not abuse. Canon House has a very classical presentation of little-to-no self esteem: drug use prior to the infarction, loner behavior, past abuse, the fact that he _rarely defends himself _unless there's a patient involved. Even (especially) when he's right.

I'm starting to regret my decision to keep this story arc ultra-compatible to the show's canon. Now it's just a matter of when I reach my critical mass of disgust for Abusive!Huddy. I call it even odds I can stand to make it to the end of this season before taking things full AU.

_The Nebulous Mistress flips a coin_.

This chapter rated M for themes on gender, child abuse, etc.

-00000-

The appropriate time was met with slammed doors and an irregular stomping, punctuated by what sounded like a cane being slapped, hard, against any surface that wouldn't break. Dr. Nolan sighed, moving from his desk to his comfy chair. Must have been a bad week.

House threw the office door open, a scowl of self-hatred darkening her features. She glared at Nolan, daring him, goading him into saying anything, any excuse to start shouting.

"All that stomping around must be painful," Nolan said calmly.

House growled.

"You must have some reason for wanting to punish yourself," he continued. "Won't you tell me about it?"

House all but threw herself into the comfy chair, purposefully landing on her right thigh and banging it against the armrest. Nolan couldn't hide the sympathetic cringe. House's agony seemed to overshadow the anger for a moment before it all started fading into a resigned dullness.

"I'm going to lose my license," House said, all emotion gone.

Nolan hadn't been expecting that. It was enough for concern to break through the façade of professional detachment. "What happened?" he asked.

House opened her mouth to begin the rant but nothing came out. She tried again. She couldn't get the anger back. She couldn't get anything back, lost in an almost pleasant haze of nothingness. She closed her eyes to block out the light. It was nice here, the anger couldn't get her, she didn't hurt anymore. Nothing existed here.

"Gillian," Nolan called. "Gillian! What happened?" He got up and started checking to make sure she was okay. Her heart rate was okay, she was breathing, didn't seem to be in any unusual pain. Wait…

"Gillian, you're having a dissociative event," Nolan said, sighing in relief. She wasn't in any danger, she'd just… shut down. "You fell into this because of stress from what happened. I can help you through this. If you can tell me what happened, why you think you're going to lose your license, then maybe I can help you. We can get you through this, Gillian. I can help you keep your license. But first I need you to come back to me. I need you to come out of this dissociation. Can you do that for me, Gillian?"

There was a voice tickling at the edge of her awareness, buzzing like a fly just out of reach. It wanted her to come back. She wasn't sure what she wanted. She didn't have to be sure, not here surrounded by Nothing, not here where only the best drugs and worst events of her life could bring her. Her eyes opened, seeing Nolan grasping her by the arms and gently shaking her. Strange that she couldn't feel the movement.

"Please, Gillian, come back," Nolan pleaded. "Come back and we can fix this. That's why you come to me, so we can fix things. I can't do it for you, you have to come back. Please."

The voice was right. She came here to fix things, she always came here to fix things. Everything could be fixed. She had to believe that. She had to, otherwise there was no reason to go back, ever. She reached out a hand to touch the reality just beyond the edge of Nothing.

A hand clasped hers and pulled. She fought against Nothing, dragging herself to the surface, desperately trying to take in reality again. Like trying to escape quicksand, Nothing tugged at her, tried to keep her within. And then…

House came back, disoriented and shivering. She hissed as all the pain came crashing back.

"Stay with me," Nolan coaxed. "Welcome back. You just had a dissociative event. They're fairly common. You're going to be all right, just stay with me, Gillian."

House noticed then that she was grasping Nolan's hand in her own. She looked down at it, wondered why it was there.

"You reached out for me," Nolan said quietly.

House nodded. She gave his hand a squeeze.

"Have these ever happened before?" he asked.

"Several times," she said, voice scratchy with unused screams.

"When was the last time it happened?" he asked.

House thought back, slowly becoming more aware of her own body. Every sense of every cell added to an underlying feeling of wrongness, a feeling only conspicuous in its absence. Her mind focused on an incident, a terrible self-induced migraine to prove an old rival wrong. "Four, maybe five years ago," she said. "I'd self-induced a migraine to prove a point. I was in so much pain. Enough vicodin to numb every nerve I have didn't touch it. I medicated with LSD, caused a serotonin spike that ended the migraine. It worked, it blissfully worked. I took a shower in the locker room then felt myself leaving. Cameron walked in. I, I think I told her I could see music. She started examining me and then I let myself go. Before she was done I was Nowhere. When I came back she was gone. I think that was the last time it happened."

"And what about the first time?"

House went dull again, not quite losing herself to the memory.

"Take your time," Nolan said.

House stared at their clasped hands, trying to ground herself outside the memory. She squeezed his hand, felt him squeeze back. "I was twelve," she began. "Dad had just started speaking to me again after, well, after I told him I knew he wasn't my father. He was up for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. He and Mom were at some function so Dad could try to butter-up his superiors.

"I was glad they left me at home. I prowled the house, did all the things Dad would have punished me for if he caught me: moving all the books around, jumping on the bed, drinking some of Dad's scotch then watering down the bottle so he wouldn't know, in general being a big ball of chaos. I was in their bedroom looking for Dad's porn so I could masturbate in the living room when I found it.

"Mom couldn't decide what dress she wanted to wear. Right before they left she'd narrowed it down to two. Dad made her pick one and she left the other hanging on the closet door. I never looked in their closet, not after that one time Dad found out about it and made me… well… Anyway, I had the incredible urge to try it on.

"It was a bit too big for me, too much space in the chest, but it felt beautiful. I spent who knows how long flaunting in the mirror before realizing there was something missing. I found Mom's stockings but couldn't get my feet into any of her shoes. I'd never put makeup on before but that didn't matter. I did what I'd seen Mom do." House smiled sadly at the memory. "I ended up with too much eyeshadow in this horrid shade of green, bright red lipstick, the rouge was about right though. Then I went downstairs and did something I never dared to do even when Dad wasn't home, I touched the turntable. I put a record on, I think it was Handel or something, and imagined a dance partner for myself."

House's face showed every moment of joy of that memory. It was one of the best of her childhood, dancing in her mother's dress with an imaginary man to the sounds of the orchestra. It was also one of her worst. The joy faltered before fading into a guarded fear. "Then they came home," she whispered.

"I'm sorry," Nolan offered.

"Mom and Dad brought the Colonel and his wife home for a drink. He didn't say anything when they all saw me. He didn't have to. I knew he was going to kill me. I ran. Ever tried to run in stockings?"

"Can't say that I have," Nolan admitted.

"It doesn't work," House said. "It's worse than socks. You have no traction and your feet slide all over a wood floor. He caught me before I was out of the room, grabbed me by the back of the dress. I remember it ripped as he dragged me out back. I know I screamed. He'd never hit me with his hands before. Each blow hurt less until I didn't feel it at all. And then there was Nothing. I don't remember what he did to me. I don't think I want to. When I came back I was left outside with a black eye and a few bruises I had no memory of getting. All I knew was that I couldn't go back inside, not until he let me in. That was two days later."

"What time of year was this?" Nolan asked. Discussions of House's abuse as a child were not new; he knew the procedure for dealing with them.

"Late August," she said. "He didn't let me have any clothes. All I had were the ripped dress and stockings. It was cold but it wasn't bad. It could have been much worse." She went quiet, mourning a childhood she hated. She finally took her hand from Nolan's, wrapping her arms around herself.

Nolan got up, fished in his desk for… ah ha! He brought out an ill-used teddy bear and set it next to House. She snatched it up and held it, needing something to hold, something to ground her.

"That was a terrible thing to do to a child," Nolan said.

"He paid for it," House said, smirking evilly. "He never got that promotion. He retired a Major. Every time I called him by rank he re-lived his failure as an officer and a father. I made sure to use his rank as often as possible after that, preferably where he could hear me. I always did, to the day he died."

"So what happened these past few days that would match that level of trauma?" Nolan asked.

House sighed. She moved the teddy bear to her lap. "Cuddy is an idiot," she began. "Years of her mother being a hypochondriac finally caught up with her. I refused to be on the case and told Cuddy she shouldn't be on it either. Of course she bribes and threatens me into it. So I make nice to the old bitch and set her up to prove she's a hypochondriac. Works so well Arlene fires me.

"I was so very thankful to be off the case. I knew I couldn't be objective. Cuddy didn't care, she ordered me back on it. I tried to make a deal with Kaufman, Arlene's new attending, and got shot down. So Cuddy had me sneaking behind Kaufman and her mother to 'do whatever it takes'."

"She used her position and your relationship to force you to take on an unethical case against your will," Nolan stated, rephrasing House's words. "Twice. The second time illegally."

"Pretty much," House agreed. "I bugged her room as a test for Masters. Didn't work, she's still a narc. So I got her distracted by something and came up with a real diagnosis with the rest of my team. Thiamine deficiency secondary to alcoholism, it fit the symptoms at the time and I had precedent considering how much she drank. I made Cuddy do all the dirty work of confronting her mother and giving her the thiamine supplements.

"Things wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as bad if she hadn't chickened on me. Cuddy told me I still wasn't allowed off the case and then refused to give me the resources or clearance I needed to do the case without breaking every ethics code in sight. I had my team switching medications behind Kaufman's back to avoid Cuddy's wrath. Masters caught wind of the maneuverings. I had her in a corner and blackmailed her into staying quiet."

Nolan sat in shock, feeling slightly ill at what he was hearing. No one should ever have to go through this, any part of it.

"Despite knowing I could ruin her, Masters went straight to Kaufman," House continued. "Kaufman has threatened to go to the licensing board about it. He will, too. And there's nothing I can do about it."

"There was," Nolan said. "You've told me. I seem to remember testifying on your behalf to the licensing board before."

"I didn't go through with it," House said, trying not to cry. "I couldn't. I didn't destroy Masters. Cuddy is actively sabotaging me, Wilson isn't there anymore, I need some sort of barrier. She's it. She's all I have left." She wrapped her arms around the bear, buried her face in the back of its head. A muffled sob broke out from behind the bear's vacant head.

"It's okay to cry, Gillian," Nolan said quietly. "You know that."

House squeezed the bear so tightly it seemed the head would pop off. This time was different somehow, she couldn't stop herself. She sobbed openly into the back of the bear's head until she had no more tears left.

When the sobs lessened and turned to sniffles Nolan offered the box of tissues.

House took the offered tissues. She wiped snot off the bear's head then blew her nose. "I want off the estrogen," she said.

"What?" Nolan asked, shocked. "Why?"

"I don't deserve it."

"Gillian, listen to me," Nolan said, enunciating as firmly as he could. "Your hormone treatment isn't a privilege, it's a right. You have the right to live inside a body that's yours. Identity is the one thing that every person takes for granted. You are Gillian House. No one can take that from you."

"I've done terrible things…" she said, trailing off.

"I don't know anyone who hasn't in some way or another," Nolan said. "What matters is how we learn from them, how we react to them. You were forced into doing a terrible thing, forced by circumstance and by a manipulative girlfriend. Cuddy is as guilty as you, if not more so."

House sniffed.

"Part of taking responsibility for your actions is recognizing when you're the one responsible. And you've done so. You've done so well, Gillian, you've come so far. You don't have to throw it all away because you feel you need to be punished. That's Greg talking."

"I know," she admitted, wiping her nose. "But it's just so hard…"

"Just because it's hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing," Nolan said gently. "You've worked so hard for this already. You've come so far. You've punished yourself enough. Please don't drop the estrogen because of this."

House nodded. She curled up in the chair like a little girl, clutching the teddy bear to her chest. She rested her chin on its head. "I wish I had one of these as a kid," she whispered. "It would have helped so much."

"Why not get one now?" Nolan asked.

"I can snuggle Cuddy," she said, deflecting.

"And does she help?"

House shrugged, not meeting his eyes.

"I think that's something for you to do for next week," Nolan said, realizing their time was running out. "I want you to find a teddy bear of your own."

"How do I do that?" House asked, honestly having no idea. "What, I mean, well, what if I get the wrong one?"

"There is no wrong stuffed animal," Nolan coaxed. "You go to the toy store and you find the one that fits best. Hold them, hug them all and choose the one that you feel is best for you. And it doesn't have to be a bear."

House held out the stuffed bear she'd been cuddling. "I'm not the only one who uses this bear, am I?" she asked. She pointed out a hasty repair down it's middle. "I don't remember tearing him in half."

Nolan smiled and shrugged. "You got me," he admitted, taking the offered bear. "He's my loner bear. Sometimes everyone needs a teddy bear. I promise he gets thrown in the wash every time someone cries into him."

"He's good for making people feel better, isn't he?" House said.

"It's his purpose in life," Nolan agreed. "Are you feeling well enough to go home on your own?"

House nodded. "I'm exhausted and depressed but I'm not a danger to myself or others anymore, if that's what you're asking."

"Good to know."

"See you next week, Doc," House said, leaving.

After House was gone Nolan found himself holding the bear close. Sometimes even he needed the teddy bear. He needed to contact someone with more experience in this. Cuddy's treatment of House was edging dangerously close to domestic abuse.

-00000-

House needed a decoy. She wasn't comfortable enough with her gender to be public about it and she needed a decoy if she was going to be found on the floor of some toy store test-hugging teddy bears. Luckily she knew a local two-year old who was running her mother ragged. Cuddy all but threw Rachel into House's arms at the offer.

House held the bungee-leash attached to Rachel's wrist as she ran around the mall corridors. The chaos was familiar, comforting. The chance to milk people's perceptions wasn't bad either, although there was something inherently empty in being mistaken for a doting grandfather taking his young granddaughter out for the day.

Rachel ran right past the toy store. House sighed and reeled in the leash, dragging a gleefully giggling Rachel close. "Ice cream!" she exclaimed.

"No, ice cream is after," House admonished. "First you and I are both going to pick out a toy at the store."

"Clicky game?" Rachel asked, eyes lighting up.

"Yes, you can get a clicky game," House said. She was lucky Cuddy hadn't asked what the clicky game was yet. When training Rachel for Waldenwood she hadn't thought the dog clicker would become one of Rachel's favorite 'games'.

"Yay! Clicky game!" Rachel tried to run into the store and was stopped by the leash House still held. Rachel pouted, looking at House accusingly.

House chuckled and reeled Rachel back in. She undid the wrist cuff. "Now remember, no leaving the store," she warned. "If you leave the store without me there won't be any ice cream."

"Okay!" Rachel bolted into the store, rampaging her way down an aisle full of dinosaurs. House loped in slowly behind, straight for the stuffed animals.

She paused, worried. There was an entire _aisle_ of stuffed animals. How in hell was she supposed to choose one? After a moment of panic she started dissecting each one with the practiced eye of a doctor. Too small, too big, not fuzzy enough, too weird-looking, too many moving parts, too seasonal…

Something silver in a sea of big white bears caught her eye. She moved a teddy bear the size of Rachel out of the way and stopped.

A small white unicorn sat alone and forlorn, squished in among the bigger bears. It's stuffed silver horn was dented and listing to one side, the stuffing forcibly migrated out of it through an act of uncaring fate. Its big brown eyes gazed imploringly out at her, asking her to take it away from these giant bear butts. She reached out to feel fluffy softness, picked it up. It was just big enough to not get lost in an enthusiastic hug.

She held the stuffed unicorn and petted it. It wasn't really forlorn, not now that it was out here in the open. And the dented horn felt right somehow. She looked into its plastic eyes and smiled.

"I found you."

She hugged the stuffed animal close. She felt better already.

-00000-

To ease fears, I'm not going to stop writing for lack of reviews. I just like having direction. From reviews comes direction, from direction comes motivation, from motivation comes action, from action comes fiction. I can write without direction but I'm faster when I have it.


	5. Progress

This chapter follows the events in 7x12 "You Must Remember This." I found the House/Wilson interactions in the episode the beautiful breath of fresh air I needed to stay interested in this season. The addition of Sara to Wilson's life fit perfectly into where I'm planning on taking this story arc.

This chapter is written Third Person Central (Nolan). I figured it was time to get Nolan's take on a session. As a result House's character will seem a little off, she's being viewed through a Nolan-filter. The Nolan-filter showed up previously in the episode 6x21 "Baggage" and was at times pretty stark in its contrast with the House-filter. I'm using that stark contrast mercilessly.

Dialogue and stage directions pulled out of the episode are compliments of the House Transcripts community on livejournal.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, abuse, etc.

-00000-

Irregular footsteps in the distance told Dr. Nolan that his week of worry was almost over. This was why his wife always accused him of loving his work more than her, this personal involvement in his patients. He worried about them, felt for them, even befriended them.

He sincerely hoped Gillian House considered him her friend.

House must have been feeling better. She'd dressed up today, lavender blouse and black skirt. She was even carrying a messenger-bag. Nolan moved to the comfy chair. "You're feeling better," he observed.

"Some," House agreed, sitting down. "I'm worried about Wilson."

"Does he know you're worried about him?"

"I told him in my own way," she admitted. "He's found someone new."

"That's good," Nolan said, encouraged.

"Her name is Sara, she's diabetic, has white hair, prefers tuna, and eats mice," House described.

"He got a… cat?"

"Again."

"You're worried because he got a cat?"

House recalled this exact conversation with Cuddy. "After Bonnie, Wilson fell into a committed relationship with a three-legged Siamese," she recited. "He stopped answering his phone, redecorated his place like Grey Gardens. He wasn't able to come back to humanity until a window was left suspiciously and heroically open. How that cat opened the window I'll never know."

Nolan gave her a disapproving look for having been the one to leave the window open. "Wilson is a known enabler," he said. "He has a compulsive need to give. Must be why he's friends with you."

"He's attracted to the shine of my neediness," she agreed, nodding sagely.

"Think about it," Nolan encouraged. "Aside from Amber, who was a proxy for you, all of the women in his life have been needy. Including you. When they don't need him anymore he loses interest and it ends in divorce."

"Which makes the cat another proxy," House concluded. "I knew this already, figured it out years ago. I spoke to him about it, dragged him to a bar and tried to hook him up with random women."

"Didn't work," Nolan predicted, deadpanned.

"How did you guess?" House asked, equally deadpanned. "I gave him ten days to get back in the dating scene. I'm hoping if he can do that then he won't disappear like last time. I think he'll chicken, he claims he isn't ready yet. It's been three months, surely he must be getting bored with his left hand by now."

"He is getting therapy, isn't he?"

"Happy pills and everything," she promised. "Not that they're working. He's even got his cat on the Nip so he can feed someone's addiction."

Nolan nodded, not entirely sure what he should do with that mental image. "Have you asked him why he's not ready to date yet?"

House shrugged. "He says he just needs a little more time," she said. "But that's what he said last time with the last cat. 'Just a little more time.'"

"Maybe he's waiting for the right woman," Nolan said.

House snorted. "He'll be waiting awhile," she scoffed. "No woman dates a man with a cat. Well, except Masters, but I think she's still a virgin. Doesn't count."

Sometimes, House was incredibly thick. "Maybe he already has someone in mind," he suggested.

"No, he doesn't," House countered. "There's no one in his life enough for him to be pining after her. Trust me, I'd know."

"Would you date a man with a cat?" Nolan asked.

House paused, visibly attempting to dissect the reason behind the question. "Depends on the man and the cat," she allowed. "Would I date a man like Wilson who had a cat? No. If he's going to be so obsessed with his cat that it becomes the focus of his life then I'm just going to end up left in the corner."

"Like last time Wilson had a cat," Nolan observed.

"Exactly!" House paused a moment, suspicious. "I thought we were talking about **dating** a man with a cat. I haven't dated Wilson."

"I never said you had," Nolan said. "But you see the pattern there, you wouldn't date a man like Wilson who had a cat because you recall Wilson's obsession with his own cat. Even though you weren't dating at the time, his focus on his cat detracted from his attention to you. To put it another way, your neediness wasn't as attractive as the cat's. Maybe that's why he has the cat, because he knows he won't be attracted to anyone else while he has it. His cat is a means to hold him over until whatever it is he wants becomes available. And you have to admit, the cat is more likely to return affection than his left hand."

"You think he was waiting for his 'perfect woman' to become available last cat?" House asked, the picture of skepticism.

"I want you to think about what was different between the rebounds after all of his failed relationships," Nolan suggested. "Think about the periods after his divorces, after Amber died, and now that Sam's left him. Five data points might be enough to find a pattern. Something for you to think about for next time. Speaking of, how's the hunt for a teddy bear going?"

"Finished," House said with a quiet pride.

"How did it go?"

House smirked before reaching into the messenger-bag to extract a stuffed unicorn.

"It's cute," Nolan offered. "What attracted you to this specific stuffed animal?"

House looked down at the unicorn and stroked it, running her hand down its mane and back like she was petting an animal. "The horn," she admitted. "It was lost behind a bunch of giant white bears. All I could see was the horn. Once I moved the bears out of the way…" House smiled, almost bashful. She held the unicorn closer, trying to hide her smile behind it.

"How did you feel?" Nolan asked, although he had a pretty good idea.

"It was perfect," she whispered, hugging it close. "Perfect in all its imperfections: small, alone, with a perfectly dented horn and big brown eyes."

Nolan looked again, noted the unicorn had black eyes. He filed that information for later. "Why did these imperfections draw you to it?" he asked.

"The unicorn is supposed to be a symbol of purity," House said. She ran her finger down each feature as she described it. "It was so small, stuffed in between giant teddy bears, small and alone. The horn is supposed to be what sets the unicorn apart from the horse, the seat of its power. A dented horn implies a shattered purity, something I could definitely relate to. And, maybe I'm biased because of Wilson but I just can't associate brown eyes with anything pure anymore." She hugged it close before setting it on her lap.

Nolan nodded, noting House really did see the toy's eyes as brown. A minor, mostly harmless hallucination. The cause was more important than the hallucination itself. "Does it have a name?"

House's expression turned from one of restrained glee to confused thought. "Should it?" she asked.

"Most people name their stuffed animals. The act of naming them gives them a power over the psyche, makes its comfort more meaningful."

She looked into its eyes. Nolan sat back, checked the time, they had plenty left. "Do I have to name him now?" she asked.

"Of course not. You sure he's a boy?"

House smirked. "You…" she said, shaking a finger.

"How was the trip to the toy store?" Nolan asked, smiling at being able to pull irreverence out of her. "Any trouble?"

"Had a diversion," she admitted. "Brought Rachel with me. I told her she could get a toy and I'd get a toy. She chose this really great fire engine."

"A fire engine?"

"Cuddy hated it," House admitted, lifting the stuffed unicorn off her lap to hold it. "Accused me to trying to 'inflict my transexuality' on her kid. She didn't believe me or her own kid when we both told her Rachel picked it out without help. Cuddy tried to make me leave the unicorn with Rachel, then had the gall to look disgusted when I told her it was mine and that I had the right to be 'girly'. I didn't go back to her for a few days. She hasn't even apologized."

Nolan grew very serious very quickly. "Why did you go back to her at all?" he asked.

House shrugged.

"Gillian, you don't have to go back to her," he said. "Just as when you do something wrong you have to apologize, when she does something wrong she has to apologize. What she did was very wrong, not just against you but against Rachel. There is no reason good enough for you to have to go back to her."

"I love her," House whispered.

Nolan sighed. He wasn't going to get through to her. He'd seen this in abuse victims, they would blame themselves and do everything in their power to stay with their abuser because they felt they needed it. Deserved it. Because they felt love was enough. He'd seen this in House, over a year of intense therapy and she was only beginning to realize her father's treatment of her wasn't her fault. It was a vicious cycle, an abuse victim moving from one terrible situation to another because she didn't know any other way. "Love isn't enough, Gillian," he said. "She has to respect you. She has to accept you for who you are. You've told me in your own words, that she doesn't respect you and that she still cannot accept your transition. Would you say either of her positions has changed?"

House hugged the unicorn close. "They will," she whispered.

Nolan ran a hand over his eyes, trying to hide his frustration. He wasn't a relationship counselor, this was out of his field. Hell, he wasn't a gender specialist either and yet House had refused to see reason, refused to see another therapist in favor of sticking with him. He had to respect that; even if her choice outlined her inability to trust someone new with such delicate information, it was still her choice. She needed more than a therapist, she needed a whole room full of therapists. He looked at her, saw her hugging her unicorn to her chest, cowering like a child expecting to be hit. He took a deep breath and suspected he was the only person outside of her childhood who had ever seen her vulnerable like this. Afraid.

"I'm not angry with you, Gillian, I'm angry with Cuddy," he said gently. "Cuddy needs to know that she's wrong. She's wrong to hurt you like she does. You know you don't deserve to be hurt, don't you?"

House curled up in the chair. She didn't answer.

"I want to hear you say it. 'I don't deserve to be hurt.' Please."

"I don't deserve to be hurt," House said, dull and without meaning.

"Say it again."

"I don't deserve to be hurt." Now she sounded scared.

"Gillian, I want you to mean it when you say it."

House nodded. "I, I don't deserve to be hurt," she said, conviction lapping at the sides of her voice.

"Good girl, Gillian," Nolan praised. "Again."

"I don't deserve to be hurt," she said again, a little louder.

"You're doing wonderful, Gillian. Once more."

House sat up, unfolded. "I... don't deserve to be hurt," she said, sounding as though it finally made sense. The words sounded real, full of an almost innocent wonder.

Nolan could have hugged her. **This** was the breakthrough they needed. "I need you to remember that, Gillian," he said. "Say it every day. You need to hear it as often as possible. You don't deserve to be hurt. You deserve happiness."

House nodded. "I want to be happy," she admitted, sounding wistful.

Nolan knew how hard it must have been for her to get this far, to realize she didn't deserve abuse. Getting House to realize she deserved to be happy would take a lot more work on both their parts.

"Do I have a Wilson fetish?" she asked, making a sudden change in subject.

Nolan took a breath as the session took a turn on its heel and careened into previous territory. "Do you think you do?" he asked.

"Cuddy called it that," she admitted, absently petting her unicorn. "Didn't accuse me of it, just said it as though she didn't have to."

_Yes, yes you do_, Nolan thought. "Consider it from her perspective," he suggested. "Rather than giving her what she demands you're rebelling against her rule by daring to spend time with your friend under the guise of getting him back into a social mindset. You're not letting her control you."

"So, no, you don't think I do."

"Professionally I think it's healthy for you to be spending time with Wilson. You're at a severe disadvantage when dealing with Cuddy because you consider yourself as having so few friends. That makes it so very easy for Cuddy to control you and abuse you."

"I know," she admitted. "But she's all I have."

"And that's my point," Nolan said. "She's not all you have. You have Wilson, your team, me…" He trailed off, worried that he was unable to add any more names to that list.

House looked somewhat triumphant at Nolan's incredibly short list.

Nolan gave her his 'we are not amused' look. "I have another therapy group I'd like you to try," he said.

House groaned. "Absolutely not," she said. "Last one insulted me to my face, the one before was made of complete morons, I am not joining some new trans-support group you've found because you think I might find someone to be friends with."

"It's not a transgender group," Nolan promised. "It's a mixed group, very small. You'll be one of five people and the only transwoman there. I did a lot of work to get you into this one, Gillian, please go at least once. Give it a try."

"If I'm the only transwoman there then what's the deal?" House said, suspicious. "I thought group therapy was supposed to involve people with something in common. Diagnosis is the easiest commonality."

"You'll be joining a clinical sociopath, two people with Asperger's Syndrome, and one with avoidant personality disorder," Nolan explained. "The commonality is the method of treatment."

House thought for a moment, probably working to figure out the treatment. "What exactly do you feel I'll get from this group?" she asked.

"You need to learn how women interact with each other and the world," Nolan said.

House sneered. "Still trying to turn me into a stereotype?" she accused.

"You've learned and used a 'guy code' through most of your interactions, haven't you?" Nolan countered. "With friends, Wilson, colleagues, everyone? Ever think there might be a 'girl code' or something similar? You choose how you present to the world, Gillian."

"You really think I'll learn this so-called 'girl code' in a group like this?" she asked, still skeptical.

"You're the one who said trans-specific groups did nothing but reinforce stereotypes," Nolan pointed out.

House gave a long-suffering sigh. "I'll go once," she said, compromising. "But if it's like any of the others I will get you for this."

"Fair enough," Nolan said. "And if you find it useful you'll keep going?"

"Yes, if I find it useful I'll keep going," House grumbled.

"That's a good girl," Nolan praised. He checked the time, realized they'd gone a little over their allotted time, stood up. "We're out of time."

House picked up her unicorn and looked at it. She cocked her head, brow furrowed in thought. "Jamie," she said. "His name is Jamie."

"Just fits?" Nolan asked. The source of the name was not lost on him.

"He has Wilson's eyes," she said, stuffing it into her messenger-bag. She started hauling herself to her feet, groaning in pain as she did so. He reached out to help her, was surprised when she took his hand. He was even more surprised when she pulled him into a hug. Habit led him to return the hug despite his surprise.

House pulled away and smiled, almost bashful. "See you next week, Doc," she said, hoisting her messenger-bag and loping out the door.

Once she was gone Nolan fell back into the comfy chair, mind reeling. House's actions today weren't caused by estrogen, hormones didn't usually do this. Hell, she was even carrying a _purse_, or at least as close as he suspected she'd ever get to a purse. She'd been feminine, vulnerable, open, sweet. She was also as obsessed with Wilson as she'd ever been, to the point of projecting a proxy of him onto an inanimate object.

He doubted she acted like this around anyone else. To be honest he was surprised and very encouraged she trusted him enough to act like this around him. He wondered if this might be who she could have been if John House hadn't gotten to her.

The thought was sobering.

He hoped she could bring herself to get away from Cuddy before the innocent, romantic, sweet woman he saw today was destroyed again.

-00000-

Ya, I know. I'm on a roll. I got other stuff to do, why am I unable to stop writing this?

The messenger-bag, or man-purse, is in my experience a common tactic among transwomen, metrosexuals, and the genderqueer. House carrying one for her session this week in no way means House is the type to carry a purse, just that it's a useful place to hide a stuffed unicorn.

For the record, Rachel isn't trans. Turns out child psychology backs me up, that children tend not to pick up gender stereotypes in terms of toys or clothes before they're three or four years old. Rachel's two. Every kid loves giant trucks if you let them.


	6. Excuses

This chapter bookends 7x13 "Two Stories". I had a really hard time coming up with what to do with this episode. Then I realized, what do you tell a pair of kids who're poking you with uncomfortable questions? Make shit up. A ten-year old is likely going to take your _incredibly _stupid story of "I wouldn't take out the trash or stop using her toothbrush or put the toilet seat down" at face value.

This episode really doesn't lend itself to a therapy session. Thus in preparation for the inevitable break-up, this chapter is Third Person Central (Cuddy). Because there are two sides to every story. It's time her side was fleshed out more. It's… not flattering.

Dialogue and stage directions pulled out of the episode are compliments of hulu.

This chapter is rated M for themes on gender, sex, etc.

-00000-

Lisa Cuddy was frustrated. Frustrated and pissed.

She hadn't had real sex since that little stunt pulled by House. If she closed her eyes and listened she could still hear the noises he made. They haunted her, mocked her for her inability to pull those noises out of him without some intermediate **tool.** Without him playing the woman.

If she were honest with herself, she was disgusted and at least a little jealous.

They'd tried to have sex since then, multiple times. A few days prior she'd let him woo her, let him make love to her with his mouth, run his hands all over her. And it was working, too.

Amazing how the sight of an injection site on his butt could turn her off. She ended up giving him a handjob, her mind supplying all the screams his closed eyes and bitten lip were refusing to give her. It made her feel ill. She ended up throwing him out that night.

Oh he was perfectly sweet, even caring. She blamed those… _hormones_ he was having injected into his butt. As if they'd ever succeed at turning him into a woman. Feh.

He wasn't her man anymore. He was turning into this girly shadow of who he used to be and it disturbed her. He wasn't House anymore.

She didn't know who he was.

-00000-

Cuddy was putting off a conference call with the board. After the whole issue with her mother she'd dreaded this moment. She kept finding other things to distract her, disclosure agreements, the budget, personnel files, clinical trials, anything work-related as an excuse to put off this stupid call.

Twenty minutes. She was supposed to call them twenty minutes ago and she'd finally run out of distractions in her office. She headed out to the clinic, willing to offer to do their paperwork, anything to put off the inevitable.

Great. Just what she needed. House chose today to actually do his clinic hours. She squared her shoulders, bit the bullet, and stepped up for that other inevitable.

"Just in time for lunch," House quipped.

"By 'lunch' you mean a conference call with the board and by 'just in time' you mean twenty minutes late," Cuddy deflected. Suddenly that phone call didn't seem quite so bad.

"I meant sex."

Of course. Horny bastard. Cuddy sighed, gave him a look that clearly asked if he was kidding.

"Fine, lunch," House allowed, raking his eyes up and down her form. "I thought we'd start with a small tossed salad."

She couldn't believe him. Wasn't estrogen supposed to make men less horny, not more? "As of this morning I'm on a diet." She walked off, hoping that would be it. Her office beckoned.

"Meaning?" House asked.

Dammit, he followed her. "Meaning, I'm busy," she said, trying to make him get the hint.

"No, you told me you were supposed to be busy 20 minutes ago," House countered. "But you were obviously able to put them off then, there's no reason you can't put them off now."

"How about I wanted to then and now I don't?" Cuddy said, trying very hard not snap at him. She picked up the phone to signal he needed to leave. He slapped his hand on the phone cradle, silencing the dial tone. "Get your finger off my phone," she threatened.

"We have something we need to discuss," House said, as though the bastard was just figuring it out.

"Now is not a good time." Cuddy didn't want to discuss it at all; she just wanted him to be normal for _once_.

"If you're mad because you don't feel you're getting the necessary amount of affection all you have to do is ask." She noticed his carnal emphasis of the word 'affection'.

"Seriously, not now."

"If memory serves, I enjoyed a healthy 'Sunday brunch' at your insinuation-" She cut him off by slamming the phone on his hand.

He cried out in pain. "What is your problem?"

"You!" Cuddy snapped, everything threatening to come spilling out. She did what she could to salvage her pride. "You are my problem! You are the most selfish, self-centered son of a bitch on the face of the planet. And I'm sick of it. I'm just. Done. I can't deal with you anymore." She got back to work, feeling better at being able to say something, even if it wasn't enough. Even if it wasn't what she really needed to say.

She couldn't handle him. Maybe if he at least pretended to be the man she fell in love with she could try and forgive him. He couldn't even do that for her. He couldn't even be her man for her. Was being the man he grew into, built a life around, was that so hard? It was selfish of him to try and take that man away from her just so he could ruin his life by trying to turn into a woman. He was in his fifties, for Pete's sake. He'd never be able to experience anything a woman could, not love, not flaunting for strangers, not lording advances over male coworkers, none of the pains or pleasures. All Cuddy saw for House if he insisted on this transition was misery when he finally realized what a mistake he'd made.

He was still standing there. He hadn't moved, hadn't even closed his mouth. She started doing paperwork, trying to signify to him in some way that this conversation, this relationship was over. That things had gotten weird.

Oh, hell, and now he looked like he was going to cry. Men aren't supposed to cry. She glared at him until he got the hint and left.

She sighed in relief. That conference call was waiting. Suddenly it didn't seem all that bad.

-00000-

"You broke up with House," Wilson accused.

Cuddy was getting really tired of everyone around her picking up House's habit of storming into her office. She rubbed her temple and let her pen drop. "You heard," she said.

"I hear things," Wilson agreed. "Like how you're not sure she cares for you."

_Don't call him 'she',_ she thought. "If he cared he wouldn't be…" She stopped herself.

"'If he cared he wouldn't be transitioning.'" he offered, accusatory. She couldn't look him in the eye.

"Have you brought this up with House?" Wilson asked.

"If at any point either of us finds his transition weird, we can just say so and we'll end it, no questions asked," Cuddy admitted. "Things are weird."

"Then why not just say that?" he asked. "Tell House things are weird and split up, like you've already agreed to. This stringing her along, this is cruel."

"I'm not stringing him along!" Cuddy defended.

"Trust me, Lisa, House is going to do something stupid," Wilson warned. "She's going to do something big and stupid and blatant and probably illegal to try and win you back. If things are weird, you have to tell her things are weird."

"But he should be able to figure it out," she said.

"House, figure out subtlety in human relationships?" Wilson asked. "Have you met her?"

"What am I supposed to do?" she demanded.

"Tell her," Wilson said. "Tell her things are weird. And talk to someone. She's not a man, stop insulting her and yourself by insisting she is." He left as abruptly as he'd come in.

Cuddy dropped her head in her hands, tried to massage away the headache. Wilson was right about one thing. She really needed to talk to someone. She just hoped he wasn't right about House doing something stupid.

-00000-

The restaurant was quiet and inviting, a stark contrast to the nervous woman sitting at a back table. Cuddy sipped her glass of wine, relying on the subtle burn of alcohol to calm her nerves and cool her thoughts. Sometimes she understood why her mother drank so much.

She waved Julia down as her sister walked in. A moment later and Julia was sliding into the seat across from Lisa and ordering a drink. "Been awhile since we just did lunch," Julia said.

"You mean without Mom insulting us?" Cuddy said. She inwardly winced. That came out wrong. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Julia said. "Your taste in men is still dismal but at least it all worked out in the end. I never would have thought her lack of a sense of humor was a symptom. I know she's always been bad at jokes but at least she used to be able to tell when someone wasn't serious."

"She'll get it back," Cuddy said, not sure if Arlene really would fully recover. "How's she adjusting to the wheelchair?"

Julia laughed. "She hates it. She knows she won't be eligible for a new implant for a while, if ever, but that doesn't mean she has to like it."

"Yeah, well, the implant did a lot of damage," Cuddy defended. "We have to wait until it heals and until the whole legal thing is taken care of. I hate equipment recalls." She took a swig of her wine.

The waiter brought Julia her champagne. "You didn't invite me out here just to talk about Mom," she predicted.

"I have a burning need to gossip about my man," Cuddy admitted.

"Oh?" Julia said, interested. "What'd he do now?"

Cuddy took a deep breath. It was now or never. "He thinks he's a woman," she admitted.

Julia paused, her champagne glass held halfway to her mouth. She put it down. "So, what, you found him trying on your clothes or something?" she asked. "No offense but doesn't he have taste?"

Cuddy gave her sister a scathing look. "I have taste," she defended. She tactfully ignored Julia's snort.

"I know the 80s are coming back," Julia said. "That doesn't mean you needed to carry their torch this whole time. Seriously, leopard print?"

Cuddy found herself sticking her tongue out at her sister. Julia sat shocked for a moment before they both started giggling. Giggles turned to laughter. Laughter eventually gave way to contented sighs and lunch orders.

Contented sighs led to Cuddy looking wistfully through her wine, the world dyed pink through its depths. "My boyfriend's a tranny," she finally admitted

"Whoa, you're serious," Julia said. "Ouch. Um, I'm sorry?"

"He's making a mistake," Cuddy said. "He's fifty-one years old. Why do anything about it now? He's always just going to be a guy in a dress."

"Why work so hard to get Rachel?" Julia countered. "You had all those years before to get a kid. Why do anything about it now?"

Cuddy narrowed her eyes, anger rising. She started to put together an appropriately scathing answer.

"Because it's what you wanted," Julia continued, cutting her off. "It was your decision and no one else's. You knew you'd be as old as some of the grandmas in the audience when Rachel graduates college. You're always going to be older than the other parents. And people, including Mom, are always going to mock you for it. But their opinions don't matter. You're happy, that's what matters."

Cuddy's rant fell flat as something clicked. "You're saying House being a tranny isn't my decision," she said.

"Nor should it be," Julia said. She finished off her champagne and called for another round for the table.

"What would you do in my place?" Cuddy asked.

"If some man I've been dating for less than a year, whom I still called by his last name in front of Mom decided he wasn't man enough? Dump him. Even if I couldn't find another, you really think I want to deal with it? You've been dating him, what, eight months? Nine? He's a big girl, he can do this himself. A really big girl, could you imagine being that tall?"

Cuddy snorted, finishing her wine as her second glass came along with their lunch. "At least he can't wear heels," she said dryly. "Doorways aren't made that tall."

"So you're gonna dump him," Julia said, not phrasing it as a question.

Cuddy shrugged. "I dunno," she admitted. "Rachel adores him for some strange reason. And I… I love him, Jules. I love who he was, who he could still be if he tried."

"Lisa, he's not going to try. And I thought Rachel adored Lucas."

"At least Lucas didn't buy her guy toys," Cuddy grumbled.

"Guy toys? What, dinosaurs?"

"Fire truck."

Julia looked at Cuddy like she'd gone daft. "Like army men?" she asked.

Army men rang a bell. When she was a little girl she'd begged her parents to buy her a box of green army men because the backyard wars the neighborhood boys played seemed like so much fun. Then when she got them the boys wouldn't let her join their battles. Instead she'd gotten her sisters to play army with her; melting plastic men on grills while Dad wasn't looking, losing them in the flower bed to imaginary quicksand traps, shooting their imaginary mortars at the boy's battles just over the fence, making the little plastic men wait on their dolls hand-and-foot…

They all played with boy's toys growing up. And none of them grew up wanting to be boys. Rachel probably wouldn't either, not considering the fire truck's main purpose seemed to be driving stuffed animals around the house. "Point," Cuddy admitted.

"While I'm sure House played with dolls as a kid, cross-gendered toys does not a transsexual make," Julia pointed out. "All of my kids did it. It's always weird the first time your son wants to dress up in Mommy's clothes but you get used to it. They grow out of it."

Cuddy was feeling better and it wasn't just the salad. It helped knowing House wasn't somehow going to turn her daughter into a boy.

"So just dump him and be over with it," Julia said. "He's not your man anymore. Either get used to dating a really tall woman with no tits or admit he's not your man and dump him. How's the sex between you too, anyway?"

Cuddy blushed, took a swig of wine for fortification. "It was pretty good," she admitted. "And then we tried something and, I dunno, I just… I can't, Jules. Ever since he had me peg him I just…"

"You get the feeling he's not enjoying it as much?" Julia asked, amused.

"You find this funny!" Cuddy accused.

"Oh come on, Mom and I talk about things like this all the time," Julia defended. "And usually much more explicit. C'mon, dish. And stop acting like such a prude."

Cuddy rarely saw this side of her sister. She wondered if this might be some of what Mom meant when she said she had more in common with Julia. She decided to just enjoy this. "Okay," she said, throwing herself into full gossip-mode. "He's usually so quiet during sex. Such tiny noises, almost absurdly cute. Just these little gasps or breaths or maybe a growl if it's really good. And then he had me peg him. Julia, I made him _scream_."

"Fun, isn't it?"

"And I'd had no idea blowjobs looked like that from their end," Cuddy teased. "I can see why men like it so much. He looked so good used like that."

"So what's the problem?"

The gossiping mood fell flat. "I didn't really get anything out of it. And then I got to thinking, maybe that's why he never makes noise. Maybe he doesn't really get anything out of what, well, what I like to do."

"This is the same House you always complained brought prostitutes to the hospital, right?" Julia asked, deadpanned. "Trust me, he enjoys it. Otherwise he wouldn't have been paying so much for it."

"But what if all of those… girls he hired..." Cuddy trailed off at the unimpressed look on her sister's face. "You're right," she admitted. "I need to stop feeling so self-conscious."

"What you need is to dump him and find a real man," Julia said.

"You sound like Mom," Cuddy accused.

"No, Mom would try and hook you up with a good husband," Julia defended. "I'm trying to hook you up with a good cock."

"Hey, House is good cock. He's just…"

"He's just a hen rather than a cock," Julia quipped.

"More like a bitch," Cuddy admitted. "A sweet, secretly romantic bitch."

"Oh God," Julia moaned. "You're not gonna dump him."

"Things are weird," Cuddy admitted. "We promised each other we'd break up if and when things got too weird. Well, they're weird. But they might not be that weird."

"This explains why Mom kept complaining that you never use his real name to his face," Julia mused. "You able to call him by the name he wants?"

"I don't know," Cuddy admitted. "I've never really tried."

"And that's why you need to break up."

"There's more to a relationship than a preferred name," Cuddy snapped.

"And despite Mom's example there's more to a relationship than good sex," Julia countered. "Just tell him you're breaking up but want to keep having sex."

"I think he's in love with me," Cuddy admitted. "I'm expecting a phone call at any time detailing some stupid thing he's done to prove his love to me."

"You have a spat or something?"

"Or something."

"Then either kiss and make up and have that great sex you want or break up 'cause things are already weird."

"And you vote option two, I get it," Cuddy said, needing more wine to deal with this. She flagged the waiter down for a third glass. "I'll dump him when and if I'm ready. Not before then. Comprende?"

"House is right," Julia remarked. "You do have an issue standing up to people when they're right."

Cuddy glared.

"We may have talked after Mom was out of surgery. It may have something to do with the reason Mom convinced that Kaufman guy to not report the both of you."

Cuddy's frustration melted, replaced with the same disturbed feeling of being impressed she'd gotten when hearing about Mom's affair. "Thanks," she said, unsure what else to say.

"'Thanks'?" Julia asked, poking fun. "I have Mom save that vaunted career of yours and all you can say is 'thanks'?"

"Yeah well I saved Mom," Cuddy defended, smiling.

"Touche. Okay, you're forgiven."

Cuddy's next words were interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. She pulled it out, answered it. The hospital had news, something about House. Yep, figured he'd do… wait…

"He did **what**?" Cuddy shouted.

A school. Fifth graders. A fight. Career day. Yes, this was an incredibly stupid thing. And big and blatant. And there were definite strings of illegality there.

She hated it when Wilson was right.

"I'm gonna kill him," she swore once she was off the phone.

"Cue the stupid thing, right? Did he succeed in winning you back?"

"He botched a career day, got in a fight with some ad executive, impersonated another doctor, got sent to the principal's office, and somehow in all this managed to get Rachel considered for the school I've been dreaming of getting her into," Cuddy said, dissolving into disbelieving giggles by the end of it.

"It sounds like he somehow managed to make a Rube Goldberg machine out of your life," Julia said, impressed and horrified.

"I gotta go do damage control," Cuddy said, getting up. "I'll get the bill on my way out. Thanks, Jules."

"Thank you for lunch," Julia said, toasting Cuddy's departure.

Cuddy left, making sure to get the bill before leaving. She was going to kill him. And then she was going to take him back. Things were weird, but Julia did have a point. She owed it to herself to enjoy herself before the weirdness became too much.

Besides, there was something she wanted to try again.

-00000-

Damage control was a bitch, as was the man who inevitably caused it all. She got her computer back, made the requisite apologies, dealt with an angry chairman, and found herself really understanding how her mom could drink so much. She finally got a chance to put the phone down when the cause of it all dared show his face in her office.

"I'm busy," Cuddy said, trying to dismiss him.

"I know."

House sounded subdued. He never sounded subdued. Cuddy gave him the floor, willing to throw him back out if he screwed this up.

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," he said.

An actual apology? Maybe he really _was_ sorry. "Shouldn't you be saying that to Sanford Wells?" Cuddy asked. "A fifth-grade career day? You really thought you could pull that off?"

"I figured, how hard could it be?" He sat down and sighed. "And I wanted to prove to you that I do care about your needs. And Rachel's."

She gave him a skeptical look.

"I do," House insisted.

"Is that why you also stole my computer?" Cuddy asked.

"Yes it is."

"And then threw it in the trash?"

"I did not throw it, I placed it, knowing the janitor would find it and know it was yours and return it to you unharmed. I'm a moron. That doesn't mean I-I don't care about you, I don't think about you, I don't want you to be happy. I was wrong, you were right. I could do better. Just, give me a chance."

"What were you, an astronaut or a bullfighter?"

"I was myself," House admitted. "For the most part."

Cuddy marveled at the incredible stupidity of this man. And yet, sometimes she remembered why she loved him.

"I know you're still upset, so I'm gonna leave you to deal with it however you want." He got up to leave.

"House," Cuddy said, stopping him in his tracks. He turned back around. "Want to come over for dinner tonight?" she asked.

"I'd love to." He pulled a new toothbrush out of his coat to show her before leaving.

Cuddy sighed in defeat. Julia was right. She was always right about relationships. But it burned most that she was right this particular time.

House didn't pick up that she'd tried to dump him because things were weird. Instead the bitch had taken her reasons at face value. She groaned in annoyance. How in hell was she supposed to dump him correctly if he couldn't even pick up her reasons why? She was being obvious enough, what, did she need to tell him flat out? 'I'm breaking up with you because things got weird?' Yeah, right. She had her pride. She wasn't going to admit things were weird, not unless he admitted it first.

She hoped he gave her another excuse. Some excuse, anything she could dangle in front of him as a good reason.

A good excuse could wait. He'd give her one, he always did. In the meantime she was going to take her sister's advice. She needed to get over her misgivings and wring all the good sex out of House before she dumped him.

-00000-

We've all heard that argument, the 'you're never going to be a real [insert preferred gender here], you're just going to make yourself miserable' bullshit advice. It's almost a cliche at this point, or it would be if it weren't for all the parents using this very argument to try and convince their children not to transition. It's fairly blatant canon that Cuddy's wanted House in her clutches, I mean bed, for a very long time. It made sense this would be the argument she would stand behind.


	7. Breakthrough

This chapter follows the events in 7x14 "Recession Proof." I wanted to explain why House would go back to vicodin without relying on bullshit and propaganda.

Then I remembered how much pain hurts. How it destroys you knowing the pain will never go away. How being made to feel intensifies everything, including the pain.

It was a very easy thing to understand.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, drugs, etc.

-00000-

Pain.

A constant companion. Background music no one else could ever hear. No one else to hear its chords, its melodies, its symphonies. Sometimes quiet, a few pluckings of a harp of nerves just barely on the edge of consciousness, so quiet it could almost be forgotten. Sometimes pleasant in its familiarity, a soft trilling of a few quiet notes, a constant reminder of being alive. Sometimes a discordant agony, every instrument in the symphony blaring without tune or melody, taking over the entire mind so totally it even blocked the screams.

The symphony changes, instruments come and go, but the presence of its music is the one constant.

A side effect of the estrogen therapy was that House was beginning to feel more attuned to her body. It was finally starting to belong to her. Nerves, senses, sensations blocked by her confused brain, blocked in an attempt to make the world make sense, in an attempt to not go insane with the wrongness of everything, were waking up.

Instruments were being added to the symphony, new instruments never heard before. Instruments that didn't know the right phrases, couldn't hold the old harmonies. A discordant mess of sensation as nerves and cells were played in ways never before felt.

The pain was worsening every day, growing louder and more discordant. Instruments warred, phrases clashed, each shrieking for attention, a battle for relevance in a mind that had never learned how to handle the noise.

The pain was driving Gillian House insane.

-00000-

She took the bike.

The car was her usual vehicle of choice to therapy. The car afforded a measure of protection, allowed her to dress up knowing all the other motorists were going to see was a head. Heads were pretty unisex, everyone had one.

She had to take the bike.

The bike flew, lifted her off the ground, away from the world. It responded like an eager lover, bowing to the lightest of touches, the gentlest of leans. The helmet muffled sound, shielded her from the wind, turned the rushing landscape into a surreal blur of cars, roads, and scenery. The leathers kept her warm, kept prying eyes from reading her. The dress rode up, pulled up to her waist by the wind, leaving only the stockings protecting long legs from the possibility to falling violently back to Earth.

She needed to take the bike.

The bike vibrated. The wind numbed. Combined, the wind and the rumble almost relieved the pain. The symphony was drowned out, its scores of instruments reduced to the occasional note.

She had no other choice.

-00000-

"I am in agony and I blame you," House snapped, throwing the door open.

Dr. Nolan sat at his comfy chair, confusion, pity, and guarded worry warring in his expression. "And what have I done to deserve this blame?" he asked.

"Nothing, you're just here," House admitted. She'd needed to feel good today, splurging on one of her old dancing dresses over a tightlaced corset and sheer stockings. She'd shaved, plucked, painted, everything she could do to try and pass, knowing full well it only worked when the helmet was on.

"I'm sorry to hear that you're in pain."

House lowered herself into the chair, had to find a way to sit where she wouldn't be causing unnecessary pain or accidentally flashing her therapist. Nolan politely made an effort to busy himself with pouring water for them both, ignoring her predicament. She gave up and just kept her legs together, dropped a hand in her lap and hoped that worked. "Flashing my audience was not a con when I bought this dress," she grumbled.

"Was this a dress you wore to sing?" Nolan asked, curious.

House stood up, willing to ignore the pain for this. She smoothed her hair, wishing it were longer. In her mind's eye, gloves and heels appeared while the room faded to a lit stage and Mama's voice calling her out to perform. She managed to spin once on her good leg, flaunting the dress for her own benefit, letting Nolan watch. "I'd wear gloves," she described. "Always wear gloves, at least elbow length to hide my man-hands. I usually had something pretty around my neck. At least four-inch heels because, really, if you're going to look good you might as well go for fabulous. My own hair, falling to my shoulders in waves, curls if it was a hot day." The thigh-length dress, sleeveless dark blue that flowed with every movement, fluttered as she relived that beautiful moment…

"I wish you'd opened up like this when you were an inpatient," Nolan said. "We could have started your transition right then."

The moment shattered. House scowled at him and limped back to the comfy chair. "And I wish I didn't have to go through any of this," she snapped, hissing in pain.

"Your pain's been getting worse." He didn't phrase it as a question.

"No shit."

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened," House said, trying not to snap at him. She also managed to refrain from insulting his intelligence or his parentage. "I've been on estrogen for a month now. We just went up to the full dose and it's hitting me hard. It's like everything's so much _more_ now; smells are stronger, colors are brighter… I never realized I hadn't been fully aware of my entire body before. I always thought it was normal to have to choreograph one's everyday movements in order to know where everything was at any given time."

"But you used to dance," Nolan pointed out, confused. "You're so graceful."

"Yes I used to dance," House snapped, giving in to that urge. "That's **why** I used to dance and why I got so good at it. I needed it to know where all of me was. And now I do and it feels so, so _wrong_. I actually find myself looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself because the tits are missing. I can feel that there should be tits!" Emphasis was placed where the tits should be, her hands grasping the empty air in front of where her mind very clearly told her breasts should be.

"How is that affecting your pain?"

"I've already said it, you moron!" She gave into her second urge. "I'm finally feeling everything my nerves have always been trying to tell me. My pain hasn't increased, my awareness of it has gone up to what I assume is normal."

"This… explains a few things we observed two years ago," Nolan said.

"You bastard," House said, fuming. There went the third urge. "You knew about this when I was stuck here and you never thought it was a problem?"

"I diagnosed it as a mild dissociative disorder," Nolan said. "And you'll gather from your last dissociative event I was right. It wasn't interfering with your ability to function in society. There's no way to treat it except to hope it's a secondary condition, the way today has led me to believe yours is secondary to your identity disorder. You didn't give me the cooperation or the information I needed to root out the cause. I knew if you did ever give that to me it would be under your own terms and your stay here was by definition **not** 'your own terms'."

House was rendered without a rant. She tried to blame him for something, anything, but couldn't find a hole in his methods. She'd been as bad as some of her own patients, withholding as much information as she could in an attempt to keep some of her mind, her self away from these white-coated head shrinking institutional psych morons…

…who were just trying to save her sanity. Damn them.

But the field itself was still fair game. "Fucking snake oil," she grumbled. "Can't even recognize a woman in a man's body unless she's waving stereotypes right under your noses. Probably couldn't recognize schizophrenia without the patient describing purple fish reciting dirty limericks."

Nolan had the gall to laugh. Well, chuckle, really. House glared at him, still mad about not getting diagnosed sooner, not having tits, the infarction, not getting to see the looks on administration's faces when that mariachi band walked in… She smirked at that thought.

"You, ah, might want to…" Nolan said, looking somewhat uncomfortable. He gestured down.

House thought for a moment, realized that during her fuming she'd had her arms crossed, was pouting, and had let her legs default to a more male standard. She looked down, yep, sitting with her knees open caused the dress to ride up and gave Nolan full view of panties and crotch-bulge. She gave him an unimpressed look that clearly stated 'enjoy my crotch, you bastard' and settled down in the chair, getting comfortable. It didn't help the view.

"You're punishing me, aren't you?" Nolan asked.

House leered, feeding off of his discomfort. She could tell her attempt at punishing him was working.

Nolan picked up a journal. "Let me know when you're done," he said, flipping to an article on low-dose MDMA treatment for cluster headaches.

House grumbled, curling up in the chair. Her thigh complained, a chord of pain shrieking up her nerves. She grunted, rubbing at the ruined muscle to calm it.

"Are you still taking your pain meds?" Nolan asked.

"I was thinking about switching to this new drug 'Placebol'," House said, deadpanned. "Ever hear of it? Might work better than the shit you have me on."

"I'm sorry it isn't working for you. I thought your pain had been largely under control."

"And then my nerves started talking to me," House snapped. Her thigh was clenched tight, not quite a spasm. The pain burned in a string of loud droning notes, all burning at the same teeth-grinding pitch. She closed her eyes and tried to fall, tried to press herself into the Nothing that would shield her from having to feel.

She remembered that single taste of vicodin. Hell, how she missed it. Even one pill would be welcome, one would be enough to hide her from her own nerves. Just one.

"The pain doesn't really go away when you dissociate," Nolan warned. "It all comes back when you return."

"Don't care," House snapped, eyes bright with tears of pain. She dug her hands into the muscle, tried to manually pull it apart, tried to stop it from getting worse. She closed her eyes again, begged the Nothing to take her, to save her from this agony. She was surprised when a hand nudged her arm, offered a couple of pills and a glass of water. She reached for them, not entirely trusting them to do what she needed.

She definitely didn't trust their taste. She closed her eyes and swallowed them down quickly, trying to ignore the spike of want that almost made her moan. They went down like soothing ice, their numbing touch spreading from her tongue as her mind anticipated the wonderful, terrible numbness only vicodin could bring.

"Acetaminophen," Nolan explained. "The non-opiate half of vidocin."

"I know what's in vicodin," she said, willing that addictive, hated numbness to spread to her thigh, to dull her senses back to what she was used to. "Got any caffeine? Makes it work faster."

He nodded, pulling a thermos out of his desk. "Tea all right?"

"Fine, fine, gimme the drugs," House coaxed.

Nolan gave her a look of supreme unamusement.

"I'm kidding. Don't even think of making me quit caffeine."

"Are you addicted to it?" Nolan asked conversationally.

"I'm an addict, of course I am," House said, the pain lessening in anticipation of the quiet numbness it expected. "So are you. Unless you're going to lie to me and tell me you could totally get by without your morning coffee."

"Point," Nolan admitted. He handed her a mug of cold tea.

She wrinkled her nose at the bitterness. Cold strong tea. She drank it fast, ignoring its taste. She needed the caffeine; it quickened absorption of the drugs. The blessed drugs…

"So I heard you went to the second group meeting," Nolan said, trying to get therapy back on track.

House snorted. "You got me into a role playing game with Masters and her little college friends," she accused.

"Hey, I pulled a lot of strings to get that set up," Nolan defended, amused. "All of you have issues that are known to benefit from therapeutic role play. And all of your primary therapists figured this format would work better than, say, being accused of enforcing stereotypes."

House knew exactly who he was referring to. They'd tried therapeutic role play once, a disastrous attempt that ended with House storming out and Nolan giving up in frustration. She ignored her instinct to make rude gestures in her defense, instead taking the high road of pretending not to be insulted. "Masters is in therapy?" she asked instead.

"Not that she knows of. One of her professors set it up."

"And she's just learning how to tell when a patient is lying to her," House crooned, hands clasped in an exaggerated gush of matronly pride. "It's a wonderful thing to know your little girl is growing up."

"You don't act like this in front of your team, do you?"

"Only when it's funny."

"Ah. You're in a much better mood. Feel better?"

House uncurled from the ball she'd been in since the spasm threatened. Her thigh shrieked, still in agony, but its sound was missing, drowned out by the numbness of the Nothing licking at her periphery nerves. It was a numbness she knew all too well, the familiar disconnect from herself she'd labored under for decades. It was slightly less total than the vicodin; only the fact that she could still feel her fingertips distinguished this from her familiar, beloved, despised vicodin dose. "I'll be okay," she said. "I lost a patient this week."

"I'm sorry," Nolan said, all amusement falling away for concern. "How did it happen?"

House shrugged. "I just didn't figure it out in time," she admitted. "I was distracted. And I know why I was distracted."

Nolan looked expectant, waiting.

"I'm happy. I deserve to be happy. And I don't want to lose that, even if it makes me a worse doctor."

Nolan sat there, stunned. House looked away, not sure why he wasn't saying anything. After all, this was exactly what they'd been working towards for so long.

And then she found herself ambushed by a hug. Nolan was kneeling on the floor in front of her comfy chair, arms thrown around her in a big, crushing hug. It surprised her. She didn't know how to react. Her arms went awkwardly around him, patting ineffectually. An ache started in her chest as his hug reminded her of the hugs Mama would give everyone right before the drag show began. Nolan was even the right size...

Nolan pulled back, a happy smile on his face. "What brought this revelation?" he asked.

"I got drunk," she admitted. "I lost my patient and got smashed. Pissed off Cuddy, I was supposed to be at some award shindig. I sent the mariachi band in my place, maybe that helped. Anyway, I got drunk and got to thinkin'. It's easier now that I can feel. And I realized I felt happy. We've worked through all our relationship problems, it's not gotten weird yet, I'm feeling better personally, I-I don't hurt. Emotionally, I mean. And what does hurt I can manage and fix and I'm doing it. It's like I'm finally succeeding at life. Almost fifty two years in I finally figure out how to be happy."

"What'll happen when your relationship with Cuddy ends?" Nolan asked. "She's made it clear she's not willing to be a lesbian for you."

"When things get weird, they get weird," House admitted. "I'll know it's nothing either of us did wrong so I won't feel bitter when I look back on it. And we've proven we can work on things unrelated to that. I think even after things get weird and we split up I'll still be happy."

"And what if you do something wrong?"

"Again? Then I'll work to fix it. I know, she has to be willing to let me fix myself when something goes wrong. So far I think she's been willing to do that but I don't know. I haven't been able to figure out what half her moods mean or if she's really meaning what she says."

"Remember, I'll be here to help you through it," Nolan offered. "And you have Wilson. And your team."

"I don't know how useful my team's going to be. Bert and Ernie have been getting on each other's nerves, Chase is still a whore, and ever since staring group therapy I haven't been able to intimidate Masters worth shit."

"I hope you're not attempting to, ah, fix any of that," Nolan said, wary.

"Nah. The Adventures of Shorty and Scowly are enough of a train wreck on their own without my help. Chase just needs to stop pretending and get tied up and spanked already. And Masters… I dunno yet."

"Spanked," Nolan repeated, concern showing through his carefully crafted veneer of neutrality.

"The boy's into bondage, he knows what he's doing."

"I see," Nolan said, nodding in an exaggerated way. "Are you still purposefully collecting information like this on all of your fellows?"

"More like none of them," House said. "It's not my fault when pro-dommes Chase used to see at play-parties bring their subs in as patients."

"I have to wonder how your fellows' sexual history is relevant to your well-being," Nolan said, annoyed.

"Sometimes even nerf football is important," House pointed out, feeling pleasantly irreverent.

"I'm calling it for today," Nolan said, looking at his watch. "You've made some major breakthroughs these past few weeks, most of them on your own. The adjustments have been fairly total, I have to admit. If things keep going so well I'm thinking we might be able to reduce our sessions to every other week. I'm impressed, Gillian. I'm very impressed. There is one thing that worries me, though. You're afraid to feel."

"Doesn't help that all I feel is pain," House muttered.

"I don't believe that any more than you do," Nolan admonished. "I know you feel more than just pain. Much more. You've just decided to focus on the pain. I want you to try to focus on other sensations. I know you're a good cook and over time the hormones are going to completely change your senses of taste and smell. You might try to track that change. Speaking of change, did you ever figure out what was different between Wilson's various break-ups? Last week you said you needed more time to figure it out."

"The first divorce he met me, moped, then met wife number 2," House listed. "The second divorce he was taking care of me after the infarction and Stacy left. Then he moped and got the first cat. Then he lost the cat and moped. The third divorce he stayed on my couch, moped, then met Cancer Patient. After Grace he moved into a hotel and moped until he met Cutthroat Bitch. After Amber he moped, moved away, then came back when my dad died. Sam, verse 2, ended with him moping and getting the second cat. Thus far the pattern is: he mopes then he meets someone who either is or has a pussy. Amber is the only anomaly; he wasn't drawn out of moping by a pussy, he got dragged into taking care of me again when I ODed. I don't know what else you want me to see."

"Maybe there isn't anything to see," Nolan admitted, looking damned smug. "Maybe there is and you haven't yet."

"You fucking bastard, that's going to bug me for days," House scolded. "You planned that, didn't you?"

"Yes, I planted Wilson's entire history and forced it to revolve around some nebulous thing you can't yet divine," Nolan said, deadpanned. "As I said, maybe there isn't anything there. Think of it as a case. Maybe there's more than one thing going on here."

"I hate you," House said, equally deadpanned. "See you next week, Doc." She limped off, not even realizing she wasn't relying so much on her cane.

-00000-

Damn him, she thought. Damn Darryl Nolan to hell.

Gillian stared at the mirror in her bathroom. She knew what hid behind it, knew why she kept it. Sometimes an addict couldn't quit unless they knew they had a stash somewhere, unless they knew they could always go back if it got bad enough again.

It was bad.

She could barely stand, the hot bath having loosened her muscles to the point of being aware of where every single one was and wasn't. She could feel every line of tension, every twitch, every string and chord of the symphony of pain. Even though it wasn't loud there was nothing keeping her from knowing every single note, rest, instrument, and phrase as intimately as though she were coaxing it out of her own piano.

She needed to learn to feel. That much was correct. But learning to cope with sensation she didn't want or understand was torture. It was too much too fast.

Gillian laughed at her reflection, laughed at the thought that she may have figured out what autism was like. But the bombardment wasn't constant, merely new. She'd learn to handle it over time.

Time.

Time was something she didn't have. Time was something she didn't want to lose. She needed to think. There had to be a way to ease her way into this new state of sensing her world.

There _was_.

Nolan would be disappointed. Cuddy would be furious. Wilson would pity her. Her team would be afraid of her. Again.

Fuck them all. They had no idea what this was like. They had no idea how much the world hurt, how she just wanted to curl up and scream.

Fuck Nolan most of all, for showing her how.

Considering her situation it made a twisted sense, that it wasn't the opiate she'd really been addicted to. It was the numbness. The opiate withdrawal just masked the wrongness of her body, replaced it with agony.

That wrongness would go away with time. But now it hurt too much. Far too much.

She pulled the mirror off the wall, leaned it carefully against the tub. It was still there, after all this time it was still there. Cuddy hadn't taken it from her.

She reached for the bottle of vicodin. Learning to feel could wait. Learning how to cope with being able to feel was more pressing.

She only took one. It felt just like the store-brand acetaminophen from earlier.

_Damn you, Nolan,_ she thought. _You did this to me._

-00000-

Science disclaimer: Having taken vicodin (for legal reason) and the same dosage of straight acetaminophen (for good reason) I have personally found no difference. Both have the same effect of numbing all the peripheral nerves without actually touching the real pain. The amount of opiate in a vicodin tablet is so small that in order for an average person to take enough to hallucinate they'd end up hospitalized for liver failure. At least, according to CDC stats and FDA expert panels. The DEA says otherwise but between science and propaganda I tend to trust science. It just so happens the writers of _House MD_ have to obey propaganda or be spanked. But I don't. So I can point out that a dissociative disorder, even a mild one, plus a numbing agent can lead to all the dangerous hallucinatory hilarity the show keeps promising without having to resort to doses high enough to nuke all livers in a five foot radius.

Science is my friend. It lets me do things.


	8. Breakdown

This chapter starts with that last scene of 7x15 "Bombshells" and goes from there. I got dark again, but then no one takes being dumped that hard very well.

Warnings for a graphic description of a drugged and dysphoric state. Momentary Dark!Wilson. Angst ahoy! Thar be a storm a'comin'. Yarr…

This chapter rated M for themes on gender, drugs, etc.

note: Hugh Laurie has a gorgeous singing voice. Just sayin'. It went well with the femme eye-makeup they put him in. On a similar note, making him sing Judy Garland? Wacky carnival theme? Tiny binoculars to watch skinny dudes without shirts? Was there any possible way to make that scene more gay? I approve. I approve _so hard…_

-00000-

Pain.

Pain was her world now. The downside of being able to feel was that it forced her to **feel**.

She'd felt fear. Intense fear at the idea of Cuddy having cancer. Fear of being wrong after having told her over and over it was nothing. Fear for Cuddy's pain and eventual death. Fear for Rachel, fear for herself.

She'd felt pain. Leg pain. Heartache. Shared pain, imagined pain, mental pain, emotional pain.

She'd felt shame. Shame at not being able to handle all these feelings without a crutch, no matter how temporary she promised herself it would be. Shame at being found out. Shame at not being able to be better.

She'd felt anger. Anger directed at the world, at Cuddy, at lawyers, at Wilson, at Nolan, at herself.

She'd felt joy, love, relief, happiness. The moment the tumor was found to be benign was the greatest moment in the world. Every good emotion in the spectrum all bundled into one intense moment so strong it took her breath away and left her on the floor halfway between tears and giddy, gleeful laughter.

That moment made all that ability to feel worth it.

And then with a word it was all taken away. Everything good and wholesome died, leaving behind pain. Shame, anger, sorrow, fear, but most of all pain.

Gillian House shook two vicodin tablets onto her palm. They sat there, calling to her, whispering their siren song of Nothing.

_Nothing abandoned you…  
Nothing doesn't want you…  
Nothing won't take you…  
but we can pull you in…  
we can push you deeper…  
we can hold you under…  
we can help you…_

"I hate you," she whispered, not even sure she'd done it aloud. The pills didn't answer. She hated that she needed them. She hated that they were right. She hated that she was a weak little addict who couldn't function without a chemical crutch. She hated that she heard their song.

She swallowed the tablets, heard their song turn to laughter. Giggling, mocking, fey laughter. She hated them, hated herself for needing it.

And then she started to sink and she didn't have to care.

-00000-

Three pills a day. She'd promised herself only three pills a day. One in the morning with the spiro when the leg pain was its worst. One in the early afternoon to get through clinic duty without finding ways to strangle idiots with their own stupidity. One in the evening with the spiro when exhaustion made her thigh lock up and scream for mercy.

And then Cuddy got sick. She tried, she really tried to see her without their help. The first time she'd made it to the door of the room before breaking down. The second attempt she couldn't even make it out of her office. When she broke into Foreman's place to distract herself with shooting zombies she had to admit it and she hated it. She couldn't do it alone.

Two pills before seeing Cuddy in the hospital bed. A little chemical courage to numb the fear, to wear the brave face for her so House wouldn't have to face the pain of losing her, so Cuddy wouldn't have to see the pain her illness had caused.

How did she find out? Were her actions different enough that Cuddy was able to sense it? Did it numb her that much? Did someone rat her out?

Was it because she tried to hide it?

Did she try to hide it? She didn't tell anyone but she didn't sneak around with black market bottles either. Did she somehow act suspicious?

It couldn't be affecting her more than she thought it would. Could it?

Maybe she should be alternating acetaminophen with vicodin, vicodin in the morning and night when it hurt the most, acetaminophen during the day when it _felt_ the most. Maybe she should have swiped some goddamn Tylenol from the pharmacy before visiting Cuddy instead of taking the vicodin.

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered. It wasn't the hydrocodone that made her feel numb, that made her feel sane. Maybe it would have hurt more to be accused of using vicodin when she'd been sucking store-brand Tylenol.

She skipped her appointment with Nolan this week. She knew he'd be disappointed. She knew he'd be compassionate and caring and disappointment would waft from his every pore. She knew he'd blame himself.

He should.

He did this.

-00000-

She didn't hear the knocking. She didn't hear the door open or the footsteps. She was busy being smothered in Nothing, floating far beneath its surface.

The world shifted, hands guiding her face to look into a set of eyes, soft brown eyes. She smiled. She liked those eyes. They always made her feel human. A voice was saying something, calling to her. It was so far away…

"How many did you take? House, how many did you take?"

How many? How many whats? Monkeys? Bullets? Pills? Pills sounded about right… She felt her mouth form the words "Just two." Her voice sounded so deep for some reason. Why did it sound so deep?

Something was terribly wrong. Her hair was gone, so short. Who did this to her? Why was her face so fuzzy? Her tits, where did they go? What was this _thing _in the middle? Her body felt all wrong, everything was in the wrong place, so wrong, what happened, what went wrong, _why was it all wrong?_

As the Nothing shattered, Gillian realized she was screaming. She held on tight and screamed in anguish at everything she'd lost, everything she never even had.

On the floor of her bathroom, surrounded by broken dreams and lost battles, Wilson held her in his arms and cried.

-00000-

An hour, a decade later House was curled up on the couch. Jamie was draped over her arm in that boneless sprawl only stuffed animals could take. Her throat hurt, sore from screaming, every exhale tasted faintly of blood. Wilson came out of the kitchen, a mug of hot tea in his hands, his eyes still rimmed with red and guilt.

"Don't blame yourself," she whispered. She took the offered tea, blew on it to cool it down. "You couldn't have known she would leave me because I'm an addict."

"How long have you been back on the vicodin?" Wilson asked, quiet and subdued.

"A week. Just a week. Only three pills a day, one morning, one noon, one night, sometimes not even that. I don't want any more than that."

"How could you want even that?"

She couldn't look at him. She held Jamie close. "I feel too much," she admitted. At his lack of an answer she chanced a glance at him, regretted it immediately when she saw the confusion, the disgust, the pity written clearly on his face. The tea went to the coffee table and she curled her arms around Jamie, hiding behind him, hiding from the shame.

"I didn't feel before, not like this," she said, trying to make him understand. "Everything was muted, quiet. I didn't have to care if I didn't want to. I didn't have to hurt. And then I started HRT and everything changed. I can't stop feeling. Everything hurts and I can't stop it alone. I need the pills to numb me from the world."

"The pills keep you from feeling," Wilson said, his voice torn between carefully neutral and hysterical panic.

House shook her head. "They don't stop it," she promised. "I don't want them to. They just make it a little quieter."

"How? How could you do this?" Wilson demanded. "You're-you're drugging yourself so you don't have to feel! I can't even comprehend this!"

"You've never cared so much it threw you into a spiral of depression so deep you had to take pills for it?" House asked, deliberately hitting a sensitive spot.

Utter betrayal darted across Wilson's face. House flinched. "That's completely different and you know it," he snapped.

"Is it? At least I'm only trying to take the edge off, not drugging my personality into nonexistence. The difference is you've got a doctor's note." She picked up her mug of tea to take a sip.

Fear shot through her when that mug was torn from her hands, hot liquid sloshing out. The next thing she heard was the crash of broken crockery as the mug impacted with the wall. She'd never been afraid of Wilson before. Sure, he'd done things at times that should have scared her but she'd only ever felt detachment or bemusement, even accomplishment.

Now she was terrified.

Wilson was furious. His fingers twitched, itching to grab something else and hurt it, break it. His teeth were bared in a silent snarl, his chest heaved from the effort of keeping himself controlled. His eyes flashed, making House realize what he wanted most to hurt at that moment was her.

She was shaking. She curled up, tried to look small. "Please," she whimpered. "Don't hurt me." She couldn't stop the tears. She couldn't stop being afraid of him and she hated it.

Adrenaline faded and Wilson's anger grew cool. And then it hit him, his best friend curled in a ball on the couch, terrified of him. It felt like being punched in the gut. "Gillian, I'm sorry," he whispered. He reached a hand out to her, stopped when she flinched away from him. "I'm not going to hurt you," he promised.

House wrapped her arms tighter around Jamie, all but burying him in her desperate search for comfort. She started to unfold her legs, the best she could do.

Wilson sat on the couch, as far from her as he felt she needed. "You're terrified," he realized. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do this."

"This is why I need the vicodin," she said, subdued. "Everything feels like this. I-I can't… I can't handle it, Wilson. I don't know how anyone can."

Wilson inched closer, was relieved when she didn't bolt. "What changed?" he asked, trying to understand.

"The hormones," House admitted, trying not to tense up as he came closer. She reminded herself that this was Wilson. This was her friend. She cared for him, she always had. She always would. He couldn't hurt her.

Except when he did.

"Transitioning is making everything feel stronger?" Wilson asked, coming still closer.

She nodded. "Nolan called it a mild dissociative disorder secondary to being trans." The medical explanation gave her something to focus on, something to use to try and bury the fear. "My brain has always worked to numb the signals it gets so I wouldn't go insane from being in the wrong body. And now I have the right hormones but it's still the wrong body and I can _feel_ everything I couldn't before because I'm not numbing anything before it gets to me and I don't know how to cope with it. I don't think I've ever felt things fully since I was twelve."

"Ever?" Wilson prompted.

"Well, not never," House admitted. "I always felt everything when I sang. And when we, well…" She trailed off, closing her eyes to try and recapture some of that joy.

Wilson took the opportunity to wrap his arms around her. She tensed before forcing herself to relax into his warm embrace. He wasn't going to hurt her. Not this time. She leaned against him.

"I'm sorry you have to go through this," Wilson murmured. "But think of how worth it the results will be."

"Why do you think I spent so much effort to keep Taub?" House pointed out. "Somebody has to do the work to make me look beautiful."

"You always were," Wilson said.

"Don't lie," House admonished.

"But everybody lies," Wilson said.

Jamie fell to the side, forgotten.

-00000-

"Are you serious?" Wilson asked, laughing.

"Completely serious," House slurred. "I am Desmonda, half-elf wizard with a specialty in Divination."

"And they call this 'group therapy?" Wilson fell over on the couch arm as he reached for his beer, laughing even more when he missed.

Several hours later had evolved into a traditional post break-up beer fest. The empty bottles on and around the coffee table attested to the level of drunkenness attained. "Oh, but we're not allowed to call it 'therapy' while we're there," House said conspiratorially. "You see, Masters is in it and she dun know it's therapy."

"Wait, wait, your Masters?" Wilson asked. "PhDs in… in… ftt… basket weaving, right?"

"Yep! One o' her professors got her in. Damn, she needs it. Can't role play worth a damn. Somebody's gotta teach her to lie and I ain't cuttin' it."

"An' wha's she play?" Wilson wracked his fuzzy brain for something that sounded sufficiently fantasy. "Elf's a class, right?"

House laughed. "She's Iolanthe, human paladin of Shey… Shy… the goddess of art an' fluffy bunnies." She took a swig of her own beer, trying to remember the name of that fantasy god… "Shelyn, tha's it!" She had to pee but there was something soft next to her foot. She looked down, squinted to see something shiny and silver. She reached down and found Jamie, halfway shoved under the couch. "Why're you on th' floor?" House asked.

Wilson snorted, just managing to not get beer in his nose. "Does the unicorn talk back?" he asked.

"Not always," House said, mockingly serious.

"Really?" Wilson asked.

House gave him a look that said he was an idiot as she got to her feet. She put the unicorn on the couch. "Hold this," she told it, handing it her beer before limping to the bathroom.

"Hey, hey House!" Wilson shouted, trying to reach his voice to the bathroom over the loud buzzing in his ears. "Why th' hell do you have a stuffed unicorn?"

"'Cause he's mine!" House shouted back, fumbling to pee. She squinted, aimed, could tell she missed. Dammit. Maybe… nope. Bah. She slammed the toilet seat down and tried that sitting thing women seemed to use.

Wilson stumbled in. "You do sit down to pee," he stated, triumphant. "Chase owes me fifty bucks."

"Will you let me pee?"

"Nuthin's stoppin' ya! Hurry up, I gotta go."

Something Wilson said hit her right then. "You made a bet with Chase about how I pee?"

"Hey, I won, didn' I?" Wilson defended, looking smug.

"I hope you forget this before morning," House said, finishing up. She stood up and threw her arm out at the toilet. Wilson smirked, stepped up and… missed horribly.

"At least I dun miss," House said, smirking.

Wilson closed one eye to stop the room from spinning so he could know where the toilet even was. It sort of worked.

"You're cleaning my bathroom in the morning," House announced. "I'm goin' to bed."

"Goodnight, House," Wilson called, finally hitting the mark on his third try.

House grabbed her beer and her unicorn on the way to bed.

-00000-

Morning dawned with a pounding headache and the aftertaste of old bread. Gillian House opened bleary eyes to sunlight, leg pain, and a stuffed unicorn poking her in the face with its snout.

"Hey, hey, wake up," it said.

House glared past Jamie, up the arm of the hand controlling its movements to the source of that voice.

"Ignore the man beside the bed," Wilson said, bobbing Jamie's head to make it look like the unicorn was the one talking. "He has to go to work. Don't you?" Wilson puppetted Jamie around to make it look like it was talking to him now.

"Why yes, I do have to go in to work," Wilson said conversationally. "But I wanted to make sure Gillian was okay."

"That's a good idea," Jamie said through words and movement supplied by Wilson.

"I have more toys you can play with," House offered, deadpanned. "Nightstand, bottom drawer."

"What's in there?" Wilson asked.

"I dunno, let's look," Jamie said, being made to nod.

Wilson had the unicorn gallop across the bed to the nightstand. He opened it. "House," Wilson said, trying to sound unimpressed at the fact that House was laughing her ass off.

"They **are** toys," she pointed out, laughing. "You can pick one and go fuck yourself with it."

"Cute," Wilson said, going for deadpanned. The light in his eyes betrayed him.

"That was uncalled for," Jamie said, being made to prod House with its snout.

"No, I think it was perfectly called for," House said conversationally. "Now move, both of you. Time for meds."

"About that, are you sure?" Wilson asked, mood falling into worry. "I mean, do you really think you need to be numbing yourself all the time?"

"Not even thinking of giving up my meds," House said, limping to the bathroom.

"House, please…" He followed her, hoping to get her to see reason.

House pulled a bottle out of the medicine cabinet and held it in front of Wilson's nose. "Bite me, Boy Wonder. I missed last night's dose so now I have a pounding headache."

"That's… not vicodin," Wilson observed.

House uncapped the bottle and took her dose of spiro. "No, it's not," she agreed, quiet and serious.

Wilson looked uncomfortable, felt sheepish.

"I'm an addict, I know. You're worried about the vicodin, I know. But I'm not willing to enslave myself to that again. I hate it, Wilson. I hate the way it makes me feel. Most of all I hate the fact that I can't get by without it right now. But it's not permanent. I don't want it to be. I need to feel. But before that I need to learn how. I don't know how to feel, not without a crutch to hide behind."

"Then feel," Wilson said, as though it were that simple.

"I-I don't know how. Not without getting hurt."

"That's part of it. But it's not all of it. There's so much more than pain, House. The vicodin doesn't just mask the pain, it masks all of it."

"I know. And right now I need that, too."

"House…"

"I tried that," House snapped, ashamed. "I tried just feeling everything. Do you know why I couldn't be with Cuddy when she needed me the most? I was curled up on the floor of the men's room because I felt too much. Why the hell else do you think I sent Chase? I can't do it. I have to learn how to deal with it before I can."

"I didn't know."

"I didn't want anyone to know."

A silence stretched between them, heavy with shame. "I'm sorry I gave you a hard time about sending Chase," Wilson admitted.

House made a dismissing motion and reached for the vicodin.

Wilson turned away. He cringed when the bottle was snapped open. "It's just another crutch," he warned, trying not to hear the rattle of pills.

"I know." She shook out two, looked at them. They started whispering again, their tiny voices promising sweet Nothing. She dropped one back in the bottle and capped it, amber plastic muffling their cries. She longed for the day she wouldn't hear them calling to her, knowing it would never come.

-00000-

Getting past Cuddy was easier with Wilson as a shield. She got the sense of Wilson glaring vitriol in a direction she didn't dare look and that was it, no complaints of being late, no being handed a case, no demands to go to HR to have their relationship declared dead. Only a sense of intense gratitude for his presence, his willingness to protect her from the pain.

Or at least, his attempts to protect her. Fruitless, token attempts. Her leg twinged, reminding her of how he'd never be able to succeed, not really.

And it was Cuddy who made sure of that then, too.

Bitter ennui lapped at her mind, waves of self-pity dragging her down to a familiar numbness.

"House?"

When had they gotten in the elevator? Wilson was prodding her, dragging her back to reality.

"I'm fine," House said, brushing him off.

Wilson sighed, sad expression telling her he knew otherwise. He followed her to the diagnostics office, made a beeline for the good coffee.

"Chase, you owe me fifty bucks," Wilson said, pouring two cups of coffee.

Chase looked confused for a moment. His face shifted to recognition to incredulity to suspicion.

"For what?" Masters asked.

"Don't want to know," Taub murmured under his breath.

"They made a bet on whether or not I sit down to pee," House said, deadpanned. She gestured at Wilson, expecting him to just hand her the cup of coffee he'd fixed for her. He sighed and rolled his eyes, made a big show of how much work it obviously was for him before handing it over.

"Why would you bet on that?" Masters asked, horrified.

"Don't believe it," Chase said, arms crossed.

"Really don't want to know," Foreman said, hiding behind a journal article.

"Just for that I'm going to stand from now on," House said deadpanned.

"See if I buy you booze again," Wilson threatened.

"Not that," House crooned, hand to her forehead in a sudden mocking melodrama. She gave Wilson an exceedingly unimpressed look when he snorted his coffee up his nose.

She knew he was trying. He was trying way too hard. All it did was remind her of the hole inside her, the wound Cuddy tore in her heart.

She thought they'd been managing well enough. She could fix things when they went wrong. She had, too, over and over. She could feel the changes she forced for Cuddy, the compromises, the contortions…

What had Cuddy done for her in return? One thing. Only one thing and if House were honest with herself she'd **forced** Cuddy to do that one thing for her.

Cuddy was right. She wasn't good enough. She'd never be good enough. She'd always be an untrustworthy addict incapable of dealing with the world. It wasn't even the fact that she was trans that pulled them apart. It was the fact that she couldn't change fast enough to keep Cuddy.

Fine then. Just. Fine.

She was done with this.

Nolan wanted her to learn how to feel. She could do that. She could do that so hard…

-00000-

Bonus points to whoever recognizes the role playing game.

I've got that "going AU" feeling in the back of my mind. Just taking this one episode at a time.


	9. Nothing

Starts as an embellishment of that last scene of 7x16 "Out of the Chute" and continues from there.

For the record, when I introduced House's dissociative tendencies I never expected the show's canon to pound me with situations where it became the best, the only explanation considering my direction. Here I pound right back. I take Hamlet's soliloquy from Act 3, Scene 1 and use it to exploit the heck out of what canon's given me on a silver platter. If that means I go AU here, so be it. Note: This has a **much** happier ending than it would seem from this set of notes.

House's views on the afterlife are not my own. Last time I stuck something in a wall socket I didn't die.

Dialogue and stage directions pulled out of the episode are compliments of the House Transcripts community on livejournal.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, Hamlet, etc.

-00000-

_To be, or not to be: that is the question:  
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer  
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,  
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,  
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;  
No more; and by a sleep to say we end  
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks  
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation  
Devoutly to be wish'd._

-_Hamlet_, Act 3, Scene 1

-00000-

Ninety-seven seconds.

The last time she was really and truly dead was only ninety-seven seconds.

She'd lied when Nolan asked for the last time she'd dissociated. Sure she'd given **a** time but not the last time. There was one more after the migraine.

It started with a knife, a wall socket.

It lasted ninety-seven seconds.

When she'd told others there was Nothing after death, she'd been literal.

There was only Nothing. Awareness without sensation, thought, emotion, intuition, or any of those other pesky signs of living. A soft mental sigh and the sense of reality receding as the Nothing accepted her, welcomed her, sucked her under with almost greedy abandon.

And then they pulled her out. An arc of heat and agony slicing through her chest and she sucked in a breath, thoroughly expected to be taking the Nothing into herself, becoming it. Dissolving into it. But no, the Nothing melted away, leaving her cold and shaking in harsh painful reality.

Death only meant the Nothing. But if that were true then Gillian House had been dead for days. A seemingly endless haze of hookers and booze in a desperate attempt to feel _something_. Pranks and puzzles, cases and compound bows, sex in every position conceivable with hookers of every gender available…

She couldn't feel anything. Not concern over her patient bleeding all over the OR, not vindication or shame at Masters' accusations falling flat when the procedure worked, not envy at the kids celebrating their game, not even pain in her leg or her heart. There was nothing there.

Which was why she was standing on the balcony of her sixth-floor hotel room.

No fear, no anticipation, no worry. Cold calculation told her the odds. If she hit the pavement she'd die on impact. If she hit the shallow end of the pool the force of her plunge would shatter whatever limb, spine, or neck hit the bottom. There was a very real risk of water forcing itself into orifices and exploding her innards from the sudden increased pressure. Best-case scenario she'd hit the water at the equivalent of 20Gs and have some serious deep tissue bruising.

There would be a second or two of lead-in to a sudden shock of sensation. Like a defibrillator.

If it didn't work, well, she was already dead.

She closed her eyes and stepped off the balcony.

Two seconds.

The world spun, tilted off its axis. She floated in air as it tried to lift her up, grasping at hair, clothes, skin. Colors blurred, homogenizing, leaving only a few twinkling lights to fly by. Wilson's voice, screaming terror in the silence.

She tucked herself into a ball.

Two seconds of flight before a sudden shock, unforgiving water grudgingly parting to cushion her fall.

Pain.

Cold, shuddering pain lanced through her from her thigh, from all along her back where she hit, from her sinuses full of water. She unfolded, snorted air out her nose to clear it. It wasn't important.

She felt pain. She could _feel_…

Never before had pain been so welcome. She let herself float, rise out of the water to take her first wonderful breath of reality in days.

Chlorine flooded her tongue, making her sputter and gag. College students, like children to her, jumped in the pool with her, oblivious to the gravity of the situation.

"What the **hell** are you doing?" shouted Wilson, standing at the edge of the pool.

"What do you do when you win?" House demanded, trying to answer his question the best she could.

"Party!" came the answering shout from all around her.

"What do you do when you lose?"

"Party harder!"

Someone handed her a beer. She chugged it, needing to clear the chlorine from her throat. Pool water burned, bubbles tickled, hops and barley pinged from the background and she relished every moment of it.

Wilson couldn't understand. He'd never been dead before.

She had. And now she was alive again.

-00000-

The hotel room was empty, oppressive, stifling. Some dead thing had lain here for days. Gillian shuddered at the feeling, the knowledge that she had been that dead thing. The room was tainted now, altered. It _stank_ in a way only she could detect.

She grabbed what she needed, the last of the cash, phone, keys, bag, cane, everything she could carry. She couldn't linger here, not even to change into dry clothes.

She wouldn't be back.

She drove. Clothes itched uncomfortably as they dried, shrank. She drove aimlessly, letting the car take her where it wanted to go. Wind roared through the open windows, chilling her to the bone.

It felt amazing.

The car traced a random pattern around Princeton before settling on a route it used to know.

-00000-

The door opened to one of the more guilt-inducing sights Gillian had ever seen. Wilson stood in the doorway, his eyes filled with the same Nothing she'd just climbed out of. He held his cat to his chest, a furry shield to hold her at bay.

She had no idea what to say. She stood there, shifting from foot to foot. Water still squished audibly inside her tennis shoes. Damp denim constricted painfully with every movement. Her hair had tried to curl as it dried, instead frizzing in a brown and gray mess. She stank of pool water and guilt and _life_.

"Why?" Wilson asked, barely managing a tired whisper.

"Have you ever been dead?" House asked.

Wilson didn't answer, anger flashing across his face. It never reached his eyes.

"I have," she continued, not expecting an answer. "I've died several times. The knife to the wall socket was the worst. I remember everything that happened when I was dead, could see Amber's expression when she found me, watched the nurses bring me back, only I couldn't feel any of it. That was the difference, the only difference between life and death. I didn't feel anything. I don't feel when I'm dead. At all.

"That's why. Because I haven't felt anything for days. I've been _dead_ for days. I needed to shock myself back to life." She bowed her head, knowing if he didn't understand now he never would. She wondered if by bringing herself back to life she'd killed their friendship. If she'd killed Wilson.

"What if you'd missed?" he asked.

"I was already dead," House said. "If I'd missed…" She took a breath, tried to summon some courage. She craved a vicodin so much right then. "If I'd missed then I'd still be dead."

"I thought I was watching you die," Wilson said, clutching Sara to his chest. The cat wiggled in protest.

"I didn't know you were there," she admitted.

"And if you had?"

"Would it have helped if I'd explained it beforehand?" House asked. Tamping down the sarcasm was difficult.

"We could have found something else, something less…" He trailed off, squeezed Sara tight. She shrieked and dug her claws into his arms. He hissed and dropped her, eight lines of pain weeping blood on his forearms. Sara ran back into the depths of the loft.

"Something less dangerous? Less likely to kill me? I don't think it would have worked."

"You don't know that!" Wilson snapped, voice breaking. The Nothing in his eyes broke.

"What was my other option?" House demanded. "Tell you my plans then deal with a hundred tiny things you'd try to entice me with, hoping to chip away at…" She stopped, sighed, tried not to throttle him. "I thought it all out," she said, quieter. "If this didn't work then I'd have come to you and asked you to defib me. It's worked every other time."

"Defib on a beating heart would have killed you."

"With no guarantee it could bring me back," House agreed. "There's no guarantee. But if it worked, I wouldn't be dead anymore."

"Is that why you've been numbing yourself with the vicodin?" Wilson asked, voice heavy with anger and agony. "Somehow making it all go away brings it back?"

House reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out the empty vicodin bottle. She handed it to Wilson. "My only bottle. It was full when Cuddy dumped me," she promised. "I've taken two in the past three days. That's all I've had." Thirty-two pills over a week, thirty in the first four days, average of seven and a half per day. About the same as her old preferred dosage, maybe a little less.

Wilson knew that, too. "That's not a lot, considering," he admitted cautiously.

"I didn't drug away my ability to feel," House pointed out, trusting the numbers to back her up. "I barely even drugged away the pain. I _died,_ Wilson. Cuddy ripped out my heart and I died. And… And…" She took a deep breath. "And I don't want to die."

The empty vicodin bottle fell to the floor. Warm hands gripped her arms, holding her up. Hell, she _ached_, in more ways than one.

"You're not dead," Wilson said, though whom he was trying to convince she didn't know.

Hands turned to arms as Wilson buried his face in her neck and held her tight. "You're not dead," he said again, definitely trying to convince himself.

"I'll be okay," House agreed, arms pinned to her sides by his frantic embrace. "I'll be okay. I'm not dead."

A dry sob wracked Wilson's frame as he held her tight. "I-I thought I was watching you die."

Being squeezed like that meant she wasn't able to keep her cane on the floor. Her leg trembled from the effort of keeping her upright after the events of the day. "Wilson," she warned, knee buckling. It failed, yanking a cry of pain and surprise from her as he tried and failed to hold her up.

Pain lanced through her knee, pooled in her thigh as she found herself sitting on the floor in front of Wilson's feet. Surprised, almost hysterical laughter fell around her as Wilson slid down the doorjamb to join her on the floor, giggling like a loon.

"You're really okay," Wilson said, as though it was just hitting him.

She attempted to look unimpressed, as though she'd planned to end up on the floor. It wasn't fooling anyone. "For some definitions of," she snapped.

"What now?" Wilson asked, feeling better. "Are you going back to the hotel?"

"Checked out after the jump," House admitted.

"D'you want to stay here?" Wilson asked. "Just tonight. Or longer, if you'd like."

"I'm not moving in." House tried to stand up, hissed when her leg didn't cooperate.

Wilson got up and reached down to help her up. Once on her feet House hooked her foot under her cane and kicked it into the air, catching it and twirling it with a flair she'd missed.

"I put your room back after Sam left," Wilson said.

House smiled and followed him inside.

-00000-

This was what she missed most. The one thing that defined most of House's life, more than medicine, more than Wilson, more than puzzles or pranks, friends or family, sex or booze or gender. The biggest thing she missed when lost in Nothing. It was her earliest comfort, her constant companion, her most gentle lover. It never judged her, never scorned her, never insulted her, never left her.

Her fingers lovingly stroked the keys of the organ, coaxing from its depths the one thing that made her life worth living, the one thing that separated life from death.

She didn't know if the music she played had a title, a purpose, or even a source. She merely played, letting her hands go where they would, her fingers dance without direction.

Sound filled the air, a formless melody of notes falling into a chaotic rhythm like raindrops on the sea. Phrases formed out of chaos, growing and changing as the music took on a life of its own and pulled her along with it, promising such wonders…

The music conjured emotions, brought thoughts unbidden to her mind. Memories long since buried, memories not yet made. A life with Cuddy, blurry images of the man she could have been, the broken man, the man she no longer missed. A life alone save for the music she made, the realization that she would be okay with that. A what-if, what if Stacy hadn't walked in on House and Wilson that one night, would he have gone through with the marriage, would it have ended differently, would it have ended the same?

A haunting image of herself, post-transition, asleep, _happy_, her arms wrapped around a man with soft brown eyes…

The music stopped. Her fingers froze and she opened her eyes. The organ looked expectant, waiting for her to find her place again.

"Don't stop."

House turned around to see Wilson leaning against the wall, eyes wide with wonder.

"I was just making it up as I went," House revealed.

"It was beautiful," Wilson said.

House shrugged. "It helps me think."

"About what?"

_I know who you're waiting for_, she thought. _I know the woman you want. You're waiting for _me_._ "Just things." Sara butted her head against House's shin. She reached down and picked up the cat, petting it, watching Wilson's reaction.

He smiled, that gentle thrilled smile she only saw on him when things went exactly as he wanted. "Go to bed, House," he said, disappearing into his bedroom. She didn't hear him close the door.

House put the cat down. Sara glared at him, indignant at losing her petting. _Successful test_. She wouldn't go for him just yet. There would be time and she wanted to feel more like herself first.

-00000-

_Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;  
And thus the native hue of resolution  
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,  
And enterprises of great pith and moment  
With this regard their currents turn awry,  
And lose the name of action._

-_Hamlet_, Act 3, Scene 1

-00000-

20Gs comes from assuming House is 70kg and plugging 20 meters of height into classical mechanics. If those assumptions are correct then he hit the water with ~14,000 Newtons of force. For comparison, the amount of force gravity exerts on those same numbers if they sit on their butt in their office is 686 Newtons. Divide, profit. High school physics. It's spread over the entire impacting surface but still. Ouch.

I blame "Three Stories" from the first season for the idea of 'memories not yet made'. Watch it again. The images House admitted to seeing while dead on the table were images from cases that had not yet happened.


	10. Something

Unless canon woos me back and gives me something I can't help but work with starting next episode, this here's the last chapter that meshes seamlessly into show canon.

Begins the night after House gets married in 7x17 "Fall from Grace" and goes from there. This episode really threw me a curve and I'm still not quite sure what to do with Dominika long-term. She's kind of in the way of where I eventually plan to go with this. Eh, that's what AUs are for.

This chapter jumps perspective about halfway through. I just needed to get some Third Person Central (Wilson) in there.

Standard note about gender pronouns being partly a social construct and thus dictated by the people in the room at that moment. Haven't had to make that note in awhile.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, Russian mail-order brides, etc.

-00000-

She'd gone insane.

Looking back at it, insanity was the only excuse House could find that explained all her actions. Getting back on vicodin, not fighting for Cuddy, running away to a hotel, jumping out of a goddamned window, and now getting married?

Nolan wanted her to learn to feel. She knew she had to learn to cope. Since when did 'coping' equate jumping at every stupid opportunity she could find?

She needed answers. Nolan was either too vague or too supportive. Wilson was out, she'd drive him as insane as she was. Cuddy could go suck a donkey. Dominika didn't even know she was trans…

Oh hell, she'd gotten married to a woman and never even told her she wasn't a man!

House curled up in her bed and clutched Jamie for dear life. She shivered, stuffed her face in her pillow to muffle her panicky breaths. The last thing she needed was Dominika coming in here asking what was wrong.

What was she going to do? She'd entered a sham marriage with a woman she'd just **met**. Meanwhile, her best friend was pining after her but waiting for her to finish transitioning before doing anything about it. She hadn't even said anything to him, what if this marriage was ruining any chance she ever had of that future? Sure she was getting to punish Cuddy in all sorts of creative and vindictive ways but it wasn't funny anymore.

They'd promised each other they'd stick it out through all the things they could fix and split amicably when things got weird. Did Cuddy really think House couldn't fix this? That she wasn't fixing this?

What if Cuddy'd dumped her because she couldn't handle the transition? House dismissed that possibility; if she'd been dumped because things got weird then Cuddy would have **said** something.

Right?

Cuddy's ego was legendary. What if that ego had gotten in the way of admitting she'd been wrong? It's happened before.

No. House refused to believe she'd meant so little to Cuddy. She refused to believe her feelings had so little worth that Cuddy felt it right to dump her on a damned excuse instead of just admitting when things got weird like she'd fucking promised!

In a fit of anger she slammed her fist into her thigh. She thought she screamed but the world tunneled into darkness as she passed out.

-00000-

House woke up to warm hands kneading into angry muscle. He groaned. Agony arced through every nerve, all centered at the spark burning in his thigh.

The hands shot away. "Wilson?" he mumbled.

"No, is me," answered a soft, feminine voice.

A moment to remember why he was in pain, another to figure out what must have happened. House realized he must have screamed, Dominika must have heard, found him unconscious on the bed, maybe tried to wake him up? Realized it must have been pain in his thigh? He had to give Dominika credit, her logic was impeccable.

"Sorry I woke you," House said, dragging himself into a sitting position. He gritted his teeth, fought off the darkness that the pain brought to his vision, managed to not pass out again. He snatched the vial of pills on the nightstand, dry-swallowed two.

"I was not asleep," Dominika admitted. "I do not understand. I know is not real marriage but why do we not sleep together?"

He never should have agreed to this. The gray-area legality of the situation was unimportant. The wrongness wasn't a problem. The mockery they'd made of marriage as an institution was kind of funny. His reasons for kicking himself in hindsight had nothing to do with the normal reasons most people would, could have. No, his reasons had everything to do with the contents of his closet and the fact that marrying Dominika was equivalent to shoving himself back in there.

He'd let himself become Greg again. And Gillian hated that.

-00000-

The night was a terrible one for all involved. As if the phone call from the FBI wasn't bad enough, neither House nor Dominika had gotten any meaningful sleep. The couch wasn't going to work and House really didn't want her in his bed. The spare room was where he stored all that remained of his pre-infarction life and all of the associated dust.

There had to be a way to work with this.

And to top it all off she wasn't even a coffee-drinker. She drank tea. Tea! House grumbled at having to find the damned kettle so Dominika could have her precious tea while he made his coffee.

They ended up at the dining table, House bolstered by coffee and reading glasses, Dominika nursing her third cup of tea. He was looking over forms and paperwork they had to file for Dominika's green card, print-outs of state and federal marriage law, a copy of their pre-nup, anything that might be useful.

Damn. This marriage would remain legal after he got his documents changed because apparently divorce law never worked out in favor of anybody. "I should just ask Wilson," he mumbled.

"Why?" Dominika asked.

"He's been married and divorced three times, he's got to know these laws backwards and forwards by now."

"He was not approving of me," she said.

"He didn't approve of me getting married on principle," House explained. "It's Cuddy who doesn't approve of you. But I don't approve of her either, so she can live with it."

"Why you not approve of her?"

House sighed. "It's a long story," he admitted.

"You can tell me."

House stared at Dominika, knew he needed some sort of lead-in to telling her. "She and I used to date," he said. "But there was never talk of marriage. We knew better because there was one thing about me that she never approved of. Well, okay, there were several things but one in particular that she decided she'd never be able to live with. So we decided we'd date until this thing got to be too much for her and then we'd split and we wouldn't hold it against each other."

"Then why you not approve of each other?"

"Because she gave a different reason for leaving me," House said. "A reason she'd never had a problem with before. A reason I suspect she used as an excuse to cover her cowardice."

"Why do you suspect? Was she not honest with you in relationship?"

"No, she was a controlling bitch."

"Oh." Dominika stared pensively into her teacup. She got up to make herself another cup.

House went back to pouring over immigration law. _Okay… two years… after two years she can apply to have conditions removed… extenuating circumstances… waiting period…_ Bleh. Divorce because the man decided he wasn't a man was pretty good 'extenuating circumstances'. And both state and federal divorce laws always considered the divorce to be the fault of the person transitioning, no matter what else was happening in the marriage. Usually a terrible prospect but here he could milk the government's intolerance far beyond its legal limit and use that intolerance to get away with it.

All of it.

Heh. He cross-referenced the relevant laws, a smirk blooming on his face. If the bureaucracy was going to fill itself with idiotic, discriminatory rules then he was going to take them for all they were worth.

"Dominika, there's something I should tell you," House said, going for nonchalant.

Dominika stood over her steeping tea, waiting for the fumes to wake her up. She looked over at her husband. "What is it?" she asked.

"I'm transgendered."

Dominika looked confused. "What's that?"

Nonchalance shattered as House slammed headfirst into the language barrier. He took a breath and tried to figure out how to explain it.

Twenty minutes, one pounding headache, and a multitude of weird looks later he finally gave up.

This was… harder than he thought.

-00000-

House was shaving when Dominika knocked on the bathroom door. "Hmm?" he asked.

Dominika came in holding a sleeveless red dress. She held it up, its hem brushing the floor. "Who's is this?" she asked.

"It's mine," House said, rinsing the razor.

"But who wears?" she asked, confused.

"I wear it. That's what I meant by 'it's mine'."

Dominika held it up, seemed to realize it was so long it could only be worn by someone of House's height. "Why?" she asked.

"Why not?"

"Women wear dress," Dominika said. "Men do not."

"I know."

"But you wear dress."

"Yep."

"You are man, no?"

Maybe this time explaining it would work. "No," he agreed. "I am not."

"You are making difficult," Dominika accused.

"Not trying to. I already tried to explain it. I'm taking medicines that will turn me into a woman."

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"Because I need to," House said. "Because I have the mind of a woman stuck in the body of a man. Because I want to. Take your pick of reasons." He shaved off the last swathe of facial hairs and wiped his face with a towel.

"You are handsome man," Dominika said. "You do not need to."

House took the dress from her hands. "Yes, I do," he said softly. "I could be the most handsome man in the world. I would still need to."

"I do not understand."

House limped off. "I can tell," he said.

Today was not going well. He'd never imagined his honeymoon would be this frustrating or this depressing.

He needed to get out of here. He needed to clear his head, to remember who he was.

He grabbed the corset and stripped. He needed to feel better.

If this didn't make her understand then nothing would. House pulled out all the stops, going for a dark-blue dancing dress that hugged all the right (and wrong) curves. He'd gotten lax on tightlacing, hadn't worn the corset since Cuddy dumped him. He found the constricting hug of the satin something he'd missed dearly. He hid his preparations from Dominika, didn't want her to see until he was finished…

Sneaking from bedroom to bathroom was simple enough. Not being walked in on once in the bathroom was the harder part. For some reason it always happened, whether it be getting ready for drag shows, nights out, or just in general, if someone was in the apartment with him they needed to use the bathroom right when he was putting on makeup.

"Five minutes," he shouted.

"But I am having to use the bathroom," came the muffled reply.

"You can wait five minutes," House shouted. This is why he hated living with a roommate. Foundation on, eyes done, he rushed with blush and lips. He smirked at his reflection, planted a kiss on the mirror for luck.

He felt just like he was performing again. It was a wonderful feeling. He opened the door.

Dominika's eyes went wide. "You are not a man," she realized.

"That is what I've been trying to tell you, _dear_," House snapped.

"But… I know is not a real marriage…"

"And this gives you the perfect excuse to divorce me in two years once you can apply for getting the conditions removed from your green card," House explained, unimpressed. Some people just had to have things spelled out to them visually.

"This does not affect until then?"

"No, this doesn't nullify our marriage. Even after the medicines have done their work and I can get my legal documents changed it won't affect our marriage. I checked and double-checked all the paperwork."

"Are you liking men in bed instead of women?" Dominika asked.

House shrugged. "I can go either way," he admitted. "I'm going over to Wilson's for awhile, how about you look a few things up on the computer, okay?"

"But when you were acting as American man…"

House stroked Dominika's cheek like she were a little slow. "You're smarter than that," he said. "I don't believe that act any more than you really do."

He left her in the hallway, mouth hanging open in confusion.

-00000-

Just getting out of the apartment was enough. Gillian sighed in relief at the beautiful loneliness, at not having to deal with stares, questions, incomprehension, the urge to vanquish Moose and Squirrel…

She should have known better than to go through a fixer who dealt with Russian mail-order brides.

"Oh my."

A familiar voice broke her out of her musings once she'd made it to Wilson's building. House paused for Nora, put on a seductive 'come hither' smirk. "Like what you see, honey?" she said.

"You're not gay, you're an ass," Nora said, trying to convince herself.

"I'm not gay, I'm trans," House countered. "You're right about the being an ass part."

"I can see that," Nora said. "The ass part, I mean."

House stuck out her butt and ran a hand down its curve. It seemed less flat than it used to be. "And it's such a nice ass," House pouted.

Nora laughed and finished getting her mail, leaving House to her plans.

House had to admit, that was one of the easier coming-outs she'd had to do.

-00000-

House posed against the doorway, one hip pressed against the frame, one arm snaked up it to make her waist look smaller, bit her lip to look interested, seductive. The man who opened the door looked less than impressed.

"Shouldn't you be at home with your wife?" Wilson asked, sounding depressed and slightly drunk.

"Why?" House asked. "I'm where I want to be."

"And you always do what you want," Wilson said.

"Not yet," she said.

"And what is it you want, House?"

"To come in, for one," she said. Wilson stepped to one side, let her in. She could feel his eyes raking over her form, taking inventory of what he saw. She let him, feeling a little thrill at being objectified. It hadn't happened in a long time, made her feel comfortable with herself. Contented.

And then it stopped. Wilson headed back to his whiskey bottle, poured himself another. "Why are you here, House?" he asked.

_To get away from small minds. Because I hate having to hide in my own home. Because I wanted to see if you were okay._ House didn't voice any of these, instead giving a tiny shrug.

"Go fuck your wife," Wilson said, dismissing House with a waved hand. He took a swallow of whiskey. "That's what you're _supposed_ to do, isn't it?"

Something about the way he spat out that word struck her as significant. "Since when do I do what I'm 'supposed' to?" she countered.

Wilson slammed his glass down on the counter before going on a tirade. "Know, what? You're right! You've never done what you're supposed to, never even _been_ what you're supposed to! You were never the man you were supposed to be; you sang in drag shows and pulled tricks like a damned rent boy! You're supposed to be a doctor, understanding, caring, but instead you're a cynical asshole who uses your job to lord your ego over your patients! You're certainly not acting the woman you're supposed to be; you've spent the past week acting the picture perfect misogynistic male asshole your father raised you to be!"

"And who's the say what I am and am not supposed to be?" House demanded, her own tirade forming. "You? Dad? Nolan? _Cuddy?_ You're all the same, all of you! You all have this tiny little box of what is and is not and since I don't fit I must not be doing what I'm _supposed_ to."

"Like getting married!" Wilson shouted, cutting her off. "You're supposed to love the woman!"

"It's a damned business contract!" House countered. "It's not forever. You of all people should know that."

"At least I've tried! Do you have any idea what it was like, watching you getting married to a woman you don't even love?"

"Yes!" House shouted, too angry to censor herself.

"Oh yeah? When was this?"

"Bonnie," she said, realizing she was in far too deep to salvage this. Besides, Wilson was the one who brought it up all those years ago.

"I loved Bonnie," Wilson said, quiet and angry.

"Then why did you tell me you'd have left her at the altar if Stacy hadn't walked in on us?" House demanded.

Wilson stood still, ice coursing through his veins. He didn't even have the presence of mind to pour himself the liquid courage he needed. "I never said that," he said.

"You were drunk, I'm not surprised you don't remember," House snapped. "I do hope you at least remember your bachelor party, drinking, dancing, you trying to crawl into my dress once we got back to my place…"

"That's different," Wilson said.

"Yeah it's different, I was your Best Man! I had to smile and act happy and make a pretty little toast about how much you _loved_ each other. At least I gave you an out by not making you stand with me in case you hadn't figured out I was entering into a fucking business contract like I fucking told you! Because that's all it is, a business contract! And you still don't believe me!"

"Because you're married!"

House took a few deep breaths before she found herself trying to shove something wooden and cane-shaped up Wilson's completely clueless ass. "I didn't come here to argue," she said once she'd gotten control. "I came here so I could relax somewhere without being bombarded with questions about why I want to be a woman when I make such a handsome **man**." She spat out the word like it tasted vile. "Goodbye, Wilson."

"House-"

She turned and left, slamming the door behind her. She didn't care what he was about to say. She didn't even think he tried to follow her.

She holed herself up in her car and cried.

-00000-

Wilson flinched as the door slammed. Once again the woman he loved had just walked out of his life and he couldn't stop her. He picked up the whiskey bottle and threw it across the room, letting go of the scream welling inside him. He didn't care where it landed, didn't even hear the smash of glass against the wall.

He sank to the floor, back supported against the kitchen island. All he could think about was how he'd lost her. And this time he couldn't even take refuge in his friendship with House.

He kept replaying their shouting match in his head, dwelling on everything they'd said. One thing he kept coming back to, something he swore he'd never told anyone. How could she have known? He didn't remember ever telling her he would have left Bonnie at the altar. He wished he did remember because then they could have fucking _done something_ about it instead of dancing around the issue, flirting openly then darting away when it got too serious because they didn't want to ruin their friendship…

He wouldn't have had to take refuge in any of them. Julie, Grace, Amber, Sam…

Oh hell, _Amber_. If ever anything were a clue that should have been it. He'd loved Amber with a burning passion he hadn't felt with anyone before, not any of his wives, not even with House. The incredible attraction, chemistry, _everything_ he'd had with the one woman in the world who could be called a female House.

He found himself giggling, hysterical giggling like the kind he'd done after House had come out to him, after he'd had time to process it alone, away from questioning looks and a demanding girlfriend. He couldn't sit here feeling sorry for himself. This is what he'd wanted, wanted so badly, the one thing he'd found and lost and found again.

He couldn't lose her again. He heaved himself to his feet, cursed the floor as it tilted in response. He tore out the door, down the stairs…

The sound of a car engine turned his insides to ice. He made it outside…

She was already gone.

Wilson's rational mind tried to tell him she'd have to return to work at some point, she wasn't just going to quit her job to do some random thing she'd found. Right? He couldn't bring himself to listen to it. He trudged back upstairs to his lonely loft and his cat. He got out the bottle of vodka. He only drank vodka when he really wanted to hate himself.

Now seemed like a good time.

-00000-

He was drunk, really drunk. He was drunk because Bonnie had just served him with divorce papers and told him to go back to his friend whom he obviously loved more than her. Accused him of having a damned affair with House. He tried denying it, couldn't get it through her fool head that they were just friends. Maybe she wasn't such a fool, he'd been haunted by dreams of a tall man in a red dress and long curly brown hair and the most beautiful blue eyes…

He was drunk. Didn't help that House couldn't partake, wasn't allowed to do anything that might interfere with the warfarin until they knew how much he needed. And that was sad, now House had to take pills for the rest of his goddamned life because of an infarction no one could diagnose for no good goddamned reason…

Poor House. Wilson longed to see those beautiful blue eyes without pain in them at least once more. To see those eyes laughing at him, painted all pretty like a girl's eyes, flirting with him, telling him he was a type of gorgeous he knew he'd never been. He'd settle for seeing those eyes mocking him, playing with him, even flashing in anger so long as he could see them unclouded by agony even _once_…

"Oh fuck no, Wilson, don't tell me you're gonna cry again," House snapped, a new edge to his voice. Wilson hated that edge, a sharp stab reminding him how pain was House's life now.

"I shouldn'ta done it," Wilson said, biting his lip to keep the tears in. "I wouldn'ta either, House. If Stacy weren' there I wouldn'ta done it. I woulda lef' Bonnie at th' damned altar. I shouldn'ta lef' you 'lone."

Wilson saw the pain fade for a moment from those blue eyes, one wonderful moment when those eyes held something else. Astonishment.

Everything else changed suddenly, everything except those eyes. A woman in a red dress sat there, long curly brown hair, endlessly long legs, the same beautiful blue eyes.

"If I wasn't with Stacy you wouldn't have gone to the altar," she said. "I wouldn't have let you go." A smirk spread across her face, morphed into a shy smile.

She was beautiful. Wilson reached out to touch her, to stroke his hand across her cheek. She leaned into his touch. She was smooth, warm, **real**…

_This_ was the woman he'd fallen in love with. And he was the only person who would ever see her like this. He leaned in to kiss her.

And woke up.

Wilson laid alone in bed surrounded by cat hairs, tossed sheets and the very sudden urge to hurl. He barely made it to the side of the bed before vomiting onto the floor, head pounding a staccato beat he recognized as vodka-induced.

The dream stayed with him, clearer than the events of the night before. He'd had a… fight? With House about how she got married? Something like that. He sighed, depressed. If marriage was just a business contract then what chance did he have with her? He was taught you're supposed to marry the person you're in love with. Thinking of it as just a business contract cheapened it somehow, more than his divorces had. And it was something he could never bring up with her, not anymore. Not now that she had this 'business contract' to hide behind. Not that he was innocent; with Cuddy out of the picture he'd been hiding behind her transition, too chicken-shit to approach her while she was still presenting as male.

There was really only one thing he could do about it. He hoped she showed up for work. He was about to try to get out of bed when his phone rang, shrill notes stabbing agony behind his eyes. He fumbled for the phone, forgot his own pain the moment he saw the number.

"House?" he asked.

"No, is Dominika," answered the voice on the other end. "House is not coming home last night. Is you knowing where he is?"

Wilson's blood ran cold. "I don't know, Dominika," he admitted. "We had an argument and she left fairly suddenly. I'll call around, see if I can't find her."

"Thank you, Wilson," she said. "I am to be waiting for word. We is supposed to be flying out today for honeymoon and I am thinking we have already missed flight. I am worried."

"I'm worried, too. I'll find her."

"Thank you." She hung up.

Wilson sat unmoving for a long, long time.

_What have I done?_

-00000-

I know, I know, all my attempts to write a Russian accent make me sound like I'm chasing Moose and Squirrel.

Before you lynch me, there's at least one more chapter. I just have to, um, write it.


	11. Everything

I am not doing something like this again. I believe I've gotten the urge to write a chapter for every episode out of my system. I've not even had to go AU; I've merely chosen to play looser with canon than I have been. Settling In is at an end but I know I'll continue to write in this particular universe as I do have a set end to the series. Meanwhile, I'm sure there are other stories that should be told. I just have to find them.

For now I'd like to thank all the reviewers who reviewed (multiple times some of them) even though I have a bad habit of never answering back, all the people who clicked the 'add to favorites' button, and all the members of Anonymous who never say anything but still manage to not think I'm nuts. I'd also like to thank the show itself and all who work on it, especially Hugh Laurie's singing voice. I **want** that voice.

Anyway…

There's a point in non-clinical depression (depression caused by situation rather than chemical imbalance) right before hopelessness where everything becomes completely irreverent and the only emotions you can really feel are the ones you pull out of other people. Anyone who's never been there will find portions of this chapter odd, out of place, and out of character.

While psychology is a subject that comes easy to me, there's a reason I stopped studying it after four years and jumped fields. For that reason when I revisit this series it will not be as focused on therapy and Gillian's interactions with Nolan.

This chapter begins where the we left Gillian during the last chapter. In case it wasn't obvious.

This chapter rated T for themes on gender, suicide, etc.

-00000-

Gillian House holed herself up in her car and cried.

Sometimes she hated the estrogen. She blamed it for making her more emotional, for making it harder to deal with the breakup with Cuddy. She blamed it for making Wilson's anger harder to handle. She blamed it for making her feel.

But then she looked in the mirror and remembered why she took it. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, saw a man trying so hard to be a woman, too hard.

She looked like shit. Tear tracks of mascara and eyeshadow stained her cheeks, giving her a raccoonish appearance.

She couldn't go home. Home wasn't a refuge anymore. Wilson wasn't a refuge either. She had nowhere she could go.

House sighed, depressed and defeated. She started the car. She couldn't stay here.

She couldn't stay anywhere.

Well, there was one place but it amounted to admitting defeat, to admitting she couldn't do this alone. But then she'd made that admission the moment she let Cuddy seduce her, had kept repeating it all through their relationship.

She drove away from her last real refuge, admitting that defeat. She pulled out her phone and called a number she hadn't thought to use in weeks.

"Umm, wha?" asked the sleepy voice on the end of the line.

"Hi, Doc," House said, overly cheerful. She tailored her tone and words specifically to get on Dr. Nolan's nerves. "Cuddy dumped me, I jumped out of a sixth floor hotel window, I got married to a mail-order Russian bride, and I just had an epic fight with Wilson. I'm on my way to Mayfield, k?"

"Oh my god," Nolan said. "Was this… just in these past few weeks?"

House almost fed off of the disturbed quality in his voice. She realized the sense of pride she got from shocking him was probably not a good thing but couldn't bring herself to care. "And the best part is, I haven't really been on anything," she said, letting that pride show through her voice. "I'm thinking three days ought to be good. That's the length of the suicide watch I just forced you to put me under, right? After all, admission of jumping out a window has to be taken seriously."

"I'll be at the hospital when you get there," Nolan said.

"No, no, I'll be fine," House said, still sounding overly happy. "Get some sleep. I can get myself checked in and we'll talk in the morning. Goodnight!" She hung up on his protests with a relieved sigh.

She already felt better.

-00000-

The orderly at the desk looked bored and half-asleep. House decided to liven up his night by barging in, makeup tears staining her face, lips pouted, wig mussed like punk were back in style, and dress hugging every single curve, particularly the curve in front.

The orderly woke up real quick. "Can I help you, um, uh…" She could see his eyes fix on her crotch bulge. "Ma'am?" At least he was tactful. She had to give him points for the pronoun.

"Checking in," House said like this was a hotel rather than a mental hospital. "Reservation for Dr. House, three day stay."

"Dr. Nolan called," the orderly said, handing her a stack of paperwork. "He's waiting for you inside."

"Aww, and I told him to go back to sleep," House said, picking up a pen.

"You also said you jumped out of a sixth floor window," the orderly said.

"Technically it was a balcony. The pool cushioned my landing. It was a carefully calculated risk. And I'm sure when I have to tell Nolan all about it he'll smile and nod and declare me a suicide risk or something. He'd better not keep me here more than three days, I didn't bring any other clothes."

"I can get some scrubs for you to wear, Dr. House."

House waved the orderly away. As he hurried off she shouted after him an unwillingness to wear borrowed underwear. She laughed at the inconvenience she caused him, went back to filling out dumb forms.

She heard a familiar, overly concerned voice say her name. "Hey, Doc," she said, turning around.

"You look terrible," Nolan said.

House scowled. "Gee, thanks," she said, deadpanned. "You should have stayed home and gotten that sleep, then you could've seen me tomorrow when I look the handsome **man** again."

"That's not what I meant, Gillian," Nolan said quickly. He seemed afraid to say the wrong thing, like his words might set her off or something. If she were honest with herself, they might. "I meant you look like a raccoon. You've been crying."

"Yeah, well, Wilson and I had a fight," she admitted. "Turns out the bastard's in love with me and too chicken-shit to say anything about it. So when I entered a business partnership with this woman I met he takes it seriously and lays into me about how I got married to a woman I don't even love. We get into this whole thing about what I'm _supposed_ to do and-" She couldn't help the sob that crept up behind her words. She turned away from Nolan, tried to keep from crying again.

A gentle hand ran up and down her back. "It's okay," Nolan said. "Do you want to tell me about it now or would you rather wait till morning?"

House sniffed, got herself under control. "Go back to bed," she said. "It can wait."

"Okay."

-00000-

Cold.

House felt cold. She could feel every scratchy thread of too-thin sheets and hard plastic-covered mattress, every gust of air from the ventilation system. She could smell bleach and rubbing alcohol.

When she jumped off that hotel balcony she hadn't wanted to die. She didn't plan on it. But if she'd missed, if she had splattered on the cement, would it have really mattered? It was worth it. Even if she'd missed, the possibility of waking up, of living again was worth it. She could make him understand that, right?

Three days. By telling Nolan she'd jumped she'd condemned herself to a seventy-two hour suicide watch, minimum. Who knows how long she'd have to stay here if she couldn't convince him she really didn't want to die.

She couldn't believe she'd come here again. She couldn't believe she'd had nowhere else to go.

She hated this place. She hated the square of light on the wall, the hall light shining through the door with the goddamned _window_ in it. She hated the cold. She hated the scrubs she had to wear. She hated the shadow that caused the light on the wall to blink. She hated whatever orderly was staring at her through that window.

She shivered from more than just the cold.

The door opened. House cringed, clamped her eyes shut, expected the condescending voice of an orderly or, worse, the overly concerned voice of Dr. Nolan.

"Gillian?"

Her eyes popped open. _What…?_

Footsteps behind her as she lay curled on her side in that hated bed. A gentle hand on her shoulder, warm and comforting.

"Wilson?" she asked, not trusting her own senses.

"I'm here, Gillian," Wilson promised. "I needed to see if you were all right."

"I'm not," House said. "I had nowhere else to go. I don't even know why I'm here; I can't stand it here, Wilson. I need to get out of here."

"I know," Wilson said. His hand stroked down her arm, petting her to calm her down. "Too many memories. Too much pain. They just want to help you, Gillian."

"They can't help me here. I've fucked things up too much. I've fucked my own life, I've lost my chance with… I…I just can't… I can't do it alone."

"Let them help you."

"Noo…" House buried her face in the pillow. She didn't want to cry, not again. She didn't want to look at him and find he wasn't there. She felt the bed dip, felt Wilson sit next to her, his hand slide down to her waist.

"It's not for long," he promised. "And then you're free. You've lived in a cage your whole life, Gillian. Someone has to open it for you."

"Even a caged bird sings," she murmured, not pulling her face out of the pillow.

"But it can't fly," Wilson said. The bed dipped more as he lay down behind her. An arm wrapped itself around her waist.

She reached down to grasp his hand. Their fingers entwined. "Stay with me tonight," she begged. "At least until I fall asleep."

"Until you can fly," Wilson promised.

She wasn't cold anymore. Gillian House fell asleep to the feel of warm breaths puffed against the nape of her neck, a familiar arm wrapped around her waist, a welcome body holding her close.

When she woke up she was alone. Outside her window the birds were singing.

-00000-

"You're looking much better this morning, Gillian," Nolan said.

House was curled up in the comfy chair, arms wrapped around her rebelling stomach. Her thigh screamed in pain and her head pounded a staccato beat, neither touched by the painkillers they allowed her. "I look **male**," she snapped.

"You don't look like the tail-end of a bender like you did last night," Nolan amended.

"Sad that I wasn't on anything to get me there," she grumbled.

"Yes, your vicodin withdrawals are very mild compared to last time," Nolan agreed. "So do you want to tell me exactly what did get you there?"

House shrugged.

"You were more than willing to taunt me over the phone last night."

"I had nowhere else to go," she whispered.

"And you came here?"

She nodded.

"I'm very glad you came here, Gillian. You know we can help you. But you also know you have to let us help you first."

House closed her eyes and tried to ignore him. She couldn't stand to hear his voice while she did this. Her inability to be there for Cuddy during the cancer scare, being dumped, the hotel, the hookers and pranks and case and all her attempts to feel _anything_, the jump, the conversation with Wilson, the suspicion that Cuddy was hiding behind her own ego, the business proposition, torturing Cuddy, Dominika's inability to understand, her argument with Wilson…

Nolan was smart enough to stay quiet for all of it. She didn't open her eyes until she'd said everything.

She couldn't look at him. She didn't want to see the pity in his eyes.

"Why did you jump off the balcony?" Nolan asked, his voice heavy.

"I was already dead," House said. "I've been dead before. Legally dead. It's just like dissociating, no more, no less. And I was trapped under for _days,_ ever since the morning after she dumped me… I… I needed to do something to bring me back."

"And what if you'd missed?"

"I was already dead," she said, finally looking him in the eye. If there was anyone she had to make understand it was this man, if only because she wanted to ever be free of this hospital. "If I'd missed I'd still be dead. If it didn't work I'd still be dead. If it worked I'd be alive. It was a choice between life and death. I jumped because I needed something to bring me back to life."

"Why?"

"Because I was dead."

"_Why?_"

He was fishing for something. There was no other reason for Nolan to be asking 'why' with such intensity. House took a breath and gave it to him. "Because I wanted to live. And days worth of sensory indulgences, one of the more intense cases I've ever dealt with in a long time - Nolan, I ordered a man's chest cut open so I could make his heart explode - wasn't enough. Not hedonistic paradise, not constant sensation, not watching my patient spray blood all over the OR, nothing was able to make me feel _anything_ and I. Was. Already. Dead. Jumping off the balcony was dangerous and I know what it still looks like but I needed something to drag me back to reality before I went insane." The realization that she was already insane struck her as funny. She laughed. "Well, more insane," she said, giggling.

"At least you're cognizant of that," Nolan admitted, still overwhelmed. "What was the first thing you were able to feel after you jumped? When was it?"

"I didn't feel the impact," she admitted. "But everything came back the moment after that. I felt cold and pain and water up my nose and I have never been so grateful to feel pain in my _life_."

"And you were sober when you did this?" Nolan asked.

"I took two vicodin about a minute before I jumped," House said. "They take about ten minutes to hit my system."

"Then why take them?"

"I knew if I succeeded I was going to be in a great deal of pain afterward from my leg and from whatever injuries I ended up with from the landing. It was a preemptive dose."

"And if you failed?"

House shrugged. "I was planning for the best," she said. "If I failed I either wouldn't be able to feel what I'd put myself through or it really wouldn't have mattered."

"You didn't care if you lived or died?"

"I was incapable of feeling _anything_," House snapped. "I thought we'd established that with not feeling anything while making the rodeo-hick's heart explode. I calculated the odds, planned for success, and did what I had to do. I certainly cared afterward but I was not capable of caring beforehand. All I knew is I wanted to live. But wanting and caring are two different things."

"Are they?" Nolan asked.

"Yes." No hesitation.

"I'm not so sure they're different things."

"You've never been unable to feel," House countered. "You can still want something even if you can't feel anything."

"I see."

"Keeping me here longer than three days just because I was in a dissociative state when I jumped completely misses the point of the dissociative state," House warned. "It not only cheapens the results of the successful jump it also cheapens your profession by showing your inability to recognize a real suicide attempt."

"You don't have to be insulting."

House looked unimpressed. She didn't understand how Wilson had been able to understand this concept so quickly while Nolan was having such a hard time with it. And unlike Wilson, Nolan specialized in this mental crap, he should be able to recognize what it meant, right?

She thought back to her first stay here, how everyone focused so much on the symptoms of the underlying condition they couldn't be bothered to connect the dots to what lie beneath.

Morons, all of them.

She should never have come here.

"Well if you're going to treat me as a suicide risk could you at least give me back my corset?" House asked, growing irreverent and mocking. "I have a known condition where I'm expected to hate my body and you're keeping from me the one physical item I brought with me that lets me alter my shape to a form I can, ah, live with." She glared at him once the mocking was finished, made it clear with her eyes exactly what she thought of him.

"I doubt you actually hate your body," Nolan said, unimpressed.

"Oh but I hate a great deal about me," House said, growing overly dramatic. She put her hand to her forehead in a classic swooning pose. "You have no idea…"

"Gillian, stop it," Nolan said.

"Why should I?" House demanded. "I know if I can't convince you I'm not a suicide risk you're going to hold my license over my head **again** and keep me here for who knows how long for no good reason. I've said my bit to convince you and gotten nowhere so why should I be cooperative? What do I get out of it if you've already decided to keep me here?"

"You have to admit, you were working on a very tough sell," Nolan said, trying to explain. "You already have multiple attempts in your history, you've been put through a very quick succession of life-altering emotional upheavals, and to top it all off you come here looking like the textbook stereotype of depressed suicidal transwoman because, and this is in your own words, you 'have nowhere else to go'."

"So, what does this add up to?" House asked, unimpressed and wary. Numbers were going through her head. _Two weeks… Three months… Until transition is finished? Oh __**hell**__ no…_

"Three days," Nolan said.

House was shocked out of being confrontational. "Just three days?" she asked.

"In my professional opinion while you're still an addict your vicodin use is under at least some measure of control," Nolan said. "Your patient with the exploding heart was saved specifically because you opened his chest and made his aorta pop. While I do not approve of your 'business contract' with Dominika this is something you have to deal with. You have to either make her understand and live with the consequences or invoke the terms of your prenup and separate peaceably. And I have the feeling Wilson would be willing to forgive you whatever you decide."

House snorted. "You weren't there last night," she said. "You were right about him. He's using the cat to tide him over until he gets the guts to chase the woman he's pining after."

"There, you see?"

"Yeah, but **I'm** the woman he's pining after!"

"I'm not surprised."

House's jaw dropped. She pointed at him accusingly, words not coming.

"And you want him as well," Nolan said. He checked his watch, timed how long it took for House to gather herself and say something.

House sighed and dropped out her accusatory stance.

"Thirty-five seconds," Nolan said. "I managed to break your mind for thirty-five seconds."

"Suck me, Nolan."

"I'd rather not."

Something he'd said registered in House's mind. "What makes you so sure he'll be willing to forgive me this time?" she asked. "I got **married**. It doesn't matter to him that it's nothing more than a business contract. He takes the whole love-equals-marriage thing seriously."

"He called this hospital about an hour ago," Nolan said. "He panicked when your wife told him you hadn't come home last night. The front desk fielded the call, said he broke down in hysterics when he heard you were here and you were safe. Assuming he kept to the speed limit he should be here in half an hour."

"If he's anything like last night he can fuck off," House said.

"I think you should give him a chance," Nolan said. "He loves you, Gillian. He just… doesn't know how to express it to you yet. After all, you were 'Greg' to him for a very long time."

"But I haven't changed! Have I?"

"You're more willing to stand up for yourself," Nolan said. "You feel more. You're having a hard time dealing with that excess of feeling. Your personality, who you are, how you interact with people, that hasn't changed. You're still irreverent, insulting, egotistical, condescending, antisocial, and utterly brilliant. The changes you've made are unimportant considering what hasn't changed and what isn't going to change."

"Then what has he been waiting for? Is he expecting me to magically turn into some sort of needy, girly woman for him to marry and fix and divorce?"

"You've always been a needy woman," Nolan said. "But, no, probably not. More likely he needs to reconcile the nearly twenty years of friendship he's had with a male-looking you with the woman you're outwardly becoming. People around you are going to be reacting differently to you because they'll expect you to have changed when it's their perspectives that have changed. And when you don't change they're going to be angry with you for not fitting into their ideas of how the world works."

"That!" House shouted, standing abruptly and pointing at Nolan, the mad, triumphant look of epiphany in her eyes. "That is **exactly** what happened last night! That is what Wilson meant! That's what went wrong with Dominika! That's exactly what's been going on!" She fell back to the comfy chair, relieved laughter bubbling up as she did. "And I thought **I** was the problem! I thought I was the one doing something wrong!"

"Your argument with Wilson?" Nolan asked.

"It was this whole big rant about how I've never done what I'm 'supposed' to. Somehow it was a surprise to him that I'm still not doing what I'm 'supposed' to. He's right, I've never done what society expected of me. Why should I start now?"

"For one thing, society is where other people are."

"Bah, not reason enough," House said, waving a hand dismissively. "Other people can follow me into this whole not being a stereotype. Wilson was doing it well enough for long enough, then Sam came along and he followed her right back into her pants. For awhile there I thought Cuddy could, too. I bet there are others I could find…"

Nolan's pager went off. "One hour fifteen minutes," he said. "Wilson could not keep to the speed limit. Would you like to see him? Or would you like me to talk to him first?"

"Only if you give me my damned corset back," House said. "Then you can talk to him first. I know you want to."

"Okay."

-00000-

Dr. Nolan pulled the strings necessary to get House reacquainted with her corset. He didn't understand the attachment she had to that particular object of clothing but he didn't have to. He could see the effects; she was usually much more comfortable, more engaged, more capable of emotion when wearing the corset. It was a crutch but it certainly wasn't the only crutch she needed to deal with the world.

There was a knock on his door frame. He looked up to see a face he'd not seen for a long time. "Dr. Wilson," he said, getting up to shake the man's hand. "Good to see you again."

"I was told I had to come here first," Wilson said, glancing around nervously. "Is House okay? I mean, really okay?"

"House is doing as well as can be expected," Nolan said. "She called me up last night around midnight and left me no choice but to have her put under observation for 72 hours."

Wilson's nervousness fell into a resigned fear. "A suicide watch," he realized, falling into the comfy chair. Someone had been in recently, the chair was still warm…

"Legally we had no choice," Nolan said. "Realistically she is in no appreciable danger so long as she receives the necessary emotional support."

"And she hasn't been getting that?"

"Dr. Wilson, I'm allowed to say very few things about Dr. House without her consent. I asked you here to talk about you."

"Um… Okay."

"So how is life treating you? How's your cat?"

"If I may be frank, Dr. Nolan, I really don't want to have to put up with small talk right now," Wilson said. "I just… I need to know House is okay."

"You love her," Nolan said.

Wilson nodded.

"How long have you known you loved her?"

Wilson shrugged. "A few months? Several years? " he offered. "I'm not sure. I mean, I really don't know. House mentioned something last night that I didn't remember."

"What was this?"

"I doubt she would have told you about something like this," Wilson said. "For my second wedding I didn't want a bachelor party. I just wanted a night out with House; we could go drinking or see monster trucks or just something fun. Imagine my surprise when she told me she was taking me to a gay jazz club for a night on the town. She'd arranged everything, including what we were going to wear." He smiled at the memory. "She wasn't the only guy in a dress, I think that helped. I was so nervous, I mean, I was getting married in a few days! I swear, she would have been happy just sitting at the bar with me drinking all night but after a few I decided I was going to make the most of the night and show her a good time.

"I had no idea she knew East Coast Swing. We danced until we were exhausted and then got a table in the back. I even managed to get her sitting in my lap while we had drinks. It was so much fun. I think I was having a bit too much fun or maybe she'd had a bit too much to drink because she kept wiggling her hips in my lap and giving me this _look_.

"It was my idea to go back to her place. Bonnie was at my place and I didn't want her to know. She'd ranted more than enough when House came to pick me up, all made up in that dress and me in a matching suit… I still can't believe I forgot Stacy was at House's place. I can't imagine the ranting she had to deal with while getting ready. I don't even want to imagine what she had to deal with when we got back."

"Yes, I've heard about that," Nolan said.

"Oh," Wilson said, embarrassed. "Why didn't you say earlier?"

Nolan shrugged. "What about what House said last night?" he asked.

"That..." Wilson said. "House said I'd told her at some point that if Stacy hadn't been there that night, if Stacy hadn't stopped us when we were, well, um…" Wilson cleared his throat. "If Stacy hadn't walked in on us I would have left Bonnie at the altar. I could have sworn I hadn't told anyone that."

"And was it true?"

Wilson blushed. "If Stacy hadn't been there I know House and I would have ended up in bed together," he admitted. "I hadn't even known I liked guys, I mean, House was my first kiss with a guy, although I guess that doesn't really count but it did then and I'm rambling aren't I?"

Nolan nodded.

"Sorry. But I don't know if it really would have happened like that. I guess it depends on how I felt about it in the morning. When I told House I was really drunk, I do remember that, so I don't actually know if I would have left Bonnie on the altar. Though considering how much Bonnie always hated House and considering she divorced me because she thought I was having an affair with him even though I really wasn't…"

"The marriage would not have lasted long," Nolan predicted.

"Or happened at all," Wilson agreed. "She might have been the one to leave me at the altar if she heard House and I had had sex right before our wedding."

"And how would you have felt if that had happened?" Nolan asked.

"I don't know. I loved her. I loved Bonnie, I mean. I might have blamed House for breaking us apart but I probably would have forgiven her and maybe we would have tried something? I don't know."

"Have you ever had sex with a man before?" Nolan asked.

"Before then? Noooo, definitely not. Before now? A few times, though I can count the number on one hand."

"And did you enjoy it?"

"It was interesting," Wilson admitted. "But it's not really for me. It's not something I'd want long-term."

"And knowing that, how do you feel about the idea that House is choosing not to seek genital surgery?" Nolan asked.

"I never really thought about it," Wilson admitted.

"I think you should," Nolan said. "A great deal of a loving relationship is sexual compatibility. You should know how willing you would be to have a sexual relationship with someone like House before attempting it."

"Someone like House?" Wilson asked. "What, an egocentric ass?"

"A non-op transwoman," Nolan clarified. "There's plenty of pornography available on the internet for you to explore."

"You're prescribing porn?" Wilson asked.

"I could take a page out of Gillian's book and prescribe a prostitute," Nolan said, deadpanned.

"I think I'll be fine," Wilson said. "Unlike House I've never been comfortable paying for sex like it's some kind of service."

"That might be because of House's, ah, less than straight-and-narrow past," Nolan said.

"Perhaps."

"What's your take on House's business contract with this Dominika?"

Wilson closed off, shrugged. "I don't like it," he admitted. "Marriage is supposed to be for love, right?"

"That's a fairly new development in human history," Nolan said. "Past sixty years, I believe."

"New like civil rights and flush toilets," Wilson countered.

"Touché. My point remains, Dr. Wilson. A marriage doesn't have to be for love, even in today's society. It's not even all that sacred anymore, not really. Society is moving more and more towards the idea of a marriage being a declaration of love in the eyes of the law but some people just aren't capable of marriage. They can commit to a person, sure, but actual marriage causes their love to poison and the relationship to collapse. I had a patient who had two failed marriages before he realized it was the act of getting married to the woman that was ruining his relationships. He's been with his latest woman for eleven years, they have two children and are still happily together but they have no plans for marriage. In fact, they have both vehemently refused demands by both their families along that line."

"You're saying…"

"Marriage isn't the be-all and end-all of love, Dr. Wilson," Nolan clarified. "Love is love. It doesn't have to be anything else. Marriage is a contract, nothing more. That's all House is treating this marriage as, a contract. Technically her actions aren't even fraudulent. I don't approve of them and I know you don't either but there's very little that law enforcement would be able to do about their marriage."

"But it's fraud!"

"Because they don't love each other?"

"Yes!"

Nolan sighed. "Dr. Wilson, I'd like you to at least pretend you heard anything I just said," he said.

"But you're supposed to marry the person you love," Wilson said. "My parents taught me that."

"Elizabeth Taylor thought that, too," Nolan said. "She had eight marriages and never really found happiness. You've had six major relationships, three of which ended in marriage. Two ended with the death of the woman, the last one ended when you proposed to her. Are you happy?"

Wilson shrugged.

"Think about that," Nolan said. "And don't give Gillian a hard time about her business contract. I'm sure she's not willing to let it last more than a few years."

"What do you mean?"

Nolan looked at Wilson, deadpanned. "This is Dr. House we're talking about," he said. "I know she's got some sort of plan figured out to get herself out of this mess and avoid any and all legal issues associated with it. She has a talent for keeping out of trouble. She has to, considering how she practices medicine."

Wilson nodded in agreement.

"I think it's been long enough," Nolan said, checking his watch. "You wanted to see Gillian, did you not?"

Wilson all but shot out of the comfy chair.

-00000-

House was sitting in the common area, leg propped up on a spare chair, watching the birds outside the window. She hadn't told anyone about her hallucination last night. Or maybe it was just a dream? She didn't know. She wasn't sure the distinction mattered.

She wrapped her arms around her waist, sighed happily at the feeling of constricting satin and steel boning. The orderlies had allowed her the corset after minimal orders from Nolan, a fact she was grateful for. It was too bad everything else she wore was borrowed, scrubs from the orderly's ward, socks and underwear from communal laundry. The idea of wearing borrowed underwear, worse, borrowed men's underwear had been skeezy enough for her to leave them hanging on the doorknob of her room. After the first incident of slipping on smooth floors the socks had gone to the guy with schizophrenia in the corner so he could have a puppet to talk to. She still found the orderly's reactions hilarious, the poor nurse trying not to scream in frustration as the guy's sock puppet told him to only eat the green jello, to hide every third puzzle piece of the jigsaws and to show no mercy!

She didn't even care that her feet were cold.

She heard footsteps. She always heard footsteps here, so many people constantly around, but these were footsteps she knew intimately well. She remembered last night, angry words bandied about, the fact that he never followed her… He was her refuge, the last place she could be herself without needing to follow some sort of stereotype...

He was why she was here. Because even he'd rejected her.

"House…" Wilson said.

She turned around, expression carefully neutral. She didn't want to expose her emotions, how much she relied on him, how much she resented him for what he did to her.

Wilson stood there looking hopeful, broken, a thousand different emotions displayed on his face. She grasped her cane and just held it, the psychological realization that she had all she physically needed right here. That he needed to earn his way back into her trust.

"House…" Wilson said again, as though he still didn't believe she was right here, safe and alive. Maybe he didn't. She didn't know.

"Wilson," she said, a neutral greeting.

Wilson took this as a cue, pulled a chair next to hers and fell into it. She felt him brush his leg against hers, decided to try an experiment. She pulled away, ever so slightly.

And watched Wilson's heart break. His face fell, he closed off and turned away, just barely enough to notice.

She shifted back to where she'd been. He wasn't there anymore, having pulled into himself. "You have no idea what you did to me last night," she said, quiet and neutral.

"You have no idea what you did to me today," Wilson said. "Dominika called, said you hadn't been home and I couldn't find you, couldn't find anything. No one knew where you were or if you were even alive. You were just… gone."

"I had nowhere else to go," House said. "You were my last. And you made damned sure I wasn't welcome there, either."

"I'm sorry," Wilson said.

House didn't answer, instead focused on the birds outside. A bluejay was swearing at a blackbird. She fancied she could place words to their shouting match, something about squirrels.

She reached out to take Wilson's hand. He grasped it for dear life, the rest of his body finally relaxing. Their thighs brushed again as a comfortable silence descended.

The bluejay and the blackbird stopped shouting at each other.

-00000-

The second evening's pill-call had an extra perk.

"Gillian, you've got an injection," the orderly said, one Nurse Rick.

The line of patients made various noises insinuating House had done something wrong. Several patients looked at the schizophrenic kid, the one who's sock puppet House had stolen after the eighth time it said 'and show no mercy!' Even House looked down at the one sock she wore, the one with eyes drawn onto it. Maybe she _should_ give the kid his puppet back…

Puppets aside, House knew what this was. She'd missed that week's dose with Dr. Hastings because of the wedding plans and everything and she was indeed starting to get a little antsy. Or maybe the thermostat really was turned up way too high.

Nurse Rick pulled out a sterile needle and a bottle of something. He filled the needle, pulled out the requisite dose.

"I'm ready for my anal probe," House said, overly serious. She moved her hands to the waistband of her scrubs.

To his credit, Nurse Rick had a sense of humor. "We have reached the limit to what anal probing can tell us," he said.

"Aww, and I was looking forward to it," House crooned, acting overly disappointed.

"I knew it!" shouted one of the patients. "I knew they did anal probes in your sleep!" The room went quiet; this was not a nonviolent patient.

"You moron," House shouted back. "Everyone knows anal probes only provide meaningful data if you're awake for it!"

"Wait, you have to be awake?" the guy asked.

"Of course. Otherwise you just get how the human butt works and everyone knows that. All the super secret data requires you to be awake and they can't erase your memory because that invalidates the data. So if you don't have full, conscious memory of being anal probed you haven't been."

The guy nodded thoughtfully and went back to his folding paper hats.

Nurse Rick looked at House with such relief at her being able to talk the guy down. She winked at him. "Just stick it in," she coaxed, sliding her scrubs off her hips and bending over. "You know you want to."

Nurse Rick sighed, swabbed, stuck, and finished.

"That was quick," House said, having fun. "You should take longer next time, it's much more… fun…"

Nurse Rick turned red and sulked off.

House gave in to the urge to laugh evilly.

-00000-

"I heard you almost set Eddie off yesterday," Nolan said.

It was the third day and House was already feeling better. They'd fixed the thermostat. She still refused to let herself think she'd been getting hot flashes from estrogen withdrawal. Her stomach still hated her, her leg still throbbed. Her headache was getting a little better, had started getting better as soon as the thermostat got fixed.

"The anal probe guy?" she asked.

Nolan rubbed his temples with his hands to ward off the headache. "Why is it you always end up trying to fix my patients and make them worse?" he asked.

"Is this about the kid with the 'and show no mercy' puppet?" House asked. She took off her sock, the one with the eyes drawn on it. "Because I can give that back to him." She sniffed at it, was hit by the stench of foot. "I don't know if he'll really want it back."

Nolan groaned in frustration. "I am sending you home tomorrow," he said.

"Yes!"

"And give the kid back his puppet."

House put the sock on her own hand, shifted it to work as a sock puppet. "And show no mercy!" she said in a helium-esque voice, making the puppet talk for her.

"Are we going to make any progress today or are we going to devolve into a shouting match like yesterday?" Nolan asked.

"That's up to you," House said, talking through the sock puppet. "Are you going to torture me again by turning the thermostat up while I'm not looking?"

"Don't be a moron," Nolan said, giving up on avoiding the headache. "That's what you get for forgetting your injection for nearly a week."

"Not my fault," the sock puppet said. "With everything that happened you're surprised I remembered to eat. You told me that yesterday."

"And what are you going to do tomorrow when you're thrust back into that same hectic world again? You know the world will be just as fast tomorrow as it was when you checked yourself in here."

"That doesn't mean I have to let it get to me," the sock puppet said. House attempted to look cute, tried to make it look like the sock was smiling. Getting the sock to smile was easy, looking cute was hard.

"The moment you name that thing I'm rethinking my willingness to discharge you tomorrow," Nolan threatened.

House scowled and took the sock off her hand. She wiped sock-sweat on her scrubs.

"That's better," Nolan said. "Now then, it's a serious question. What are you going to do tomorrow when you have to face all the problems again that drove you back here?"

House sighed. "First thing I have to do is figure out what to do with Dominika," she said. "The easiest thing to do would be to invoke the prenup and we both go our separate ways. That… makes me sad, actually. Despite her inability to figure out I'm not a man she's actually a lot of fun to be around. She's nowhere near Wilson's caliber of fun but she's… She's fun. She's like the Eve Teschmacher to my Lex Luthor."

Nolan didn't get the reference.

"Look it up later," House said dismissively. "The best way I can think of to deal with Cuddy is to leave it all alone. Don't antagonize her, don't act like I care, don't interact with her unless it's work, just leave her alone. That means no more monster trucks at work, no more conning leisure equipment out of her."

"What a terrible sacrifice," Nolan said, amused smile ruining the sarcasm.

"Oh I know!" House said, playing along. "I may even have to get rid of the segway. Who knows what I'll do!"

"You'll manage," Nolan said, deadpanned. "What else?"

"I haven't figured out what to do with Wilson yet," she admitted. "I figure we'll try to get back to some semblance of normal for now. I guess I should be working on trying to present as female. That probably means doing something about the beard." She hadn't been able to shave since she checked in, the stubble was back full-force. "I keep putting it off since I know it'll take so long and that just makes it take longer, I know, bite me."

"I spoke to a gender specialist about that," Nolan said. "There are a few places that'll shut down for a day and spend that whole day just working on one client to get the whole job done, start to finish. It's not cheap but you did just skip out on an expensive honeymoon in favor of committing yourself to a mental hospital."

House groaned. "Don't remind me," she said. "I'm supposed to be in Hawaii right now."

"I'm sure all the hula dancers you're missing will forgive you," Nolan said.

"But I'll never know!" House said, being melodramatic.

Nolan waited for the irreverence to die down. "I'm sure you could get Wilson in a grass skirt and poke him until he wiggles," he said.

As House burst out laughing at the mental image Nolan couldn't believe he'd said such a thing. One thing he could be fairly sure of, Gillian would be fine. If she could get through this particular bad patch and avoid any like it in the future she'd be fine.

He hoped.

-00000-

The one-day-electrolysis place is a myth I've heard. Supposedly it's in Texas somewhere.


End file.
